Day +25 or Day +100, either way, he's still here

Today is Day +25 post Rowan's second transplant.

It is also Day +100 post his first transplant. That is the target date for when you typically get discharged to go all the back to your home.  The date that you no longer have to be in the hospital or less than 30 minutes from the hospital.

Instead of heading back to Texas today, Rowan headed down to surgery again.  Instead of packing up the car to leave Washington, I sat and waited for four hours for him to get back to his PICU room.  Instead of ceasing treatment, Rowan had a permanent line placed so he could continue ongoing dialysis treatment.  Instead of packing away his beads of courage to take home, he earned a dozen more beads to add to them, today alone. 

So, it was kind of a hard day...

I cried a little when I sat down to journal today.  I had pre-dated the entire journal, up through day +100, when we started the first transplant.  I added in the new daily count once we started conditioning for transplant number two, but I left the old daily count there as well.  For some reason, I still wanted to know.  But seeing today's two numbers: "Day +25" and "Day +100", on the same page, hit me hard.  That is a big milestone.  It is actually THE biggest goal you have during transplant.  Hitting Day +100...it's HUGE!

The longer Rowan was down in surgery, the more I thought about the what ifs. What if transplant number one had been successful? What if Rowan had not had all of these complications?  What if we really were headed back home to Texas this weekend?  My mind was spinning. 

All of the sudden, I heard a little voice inside my head...it was Rowan's.  It was saying, "What if I wasn't down in surgery?", "What if I hadn't made it through some of these complications?", "What if I hadn't made it to transplant number two?"  Rowan wasn't in the room with me.  He was in surgery having the temporary dialysis line pulled from his groin, having angioplasty to open up a vein in his chest, having a new more permanent dialysis line placed through his jugular into his vena cava, and having a repeat lumbar puncture done to check the levels of his CMV encephalitis.  But still, I could hear his sweet little voice, reeling me back in, reminding me of what's truly important. 

No, Rowan wasn't actually saying those things to me, but I do believe, that had he not been under anesthesia, had he heard what I was thinking...he would have said something just exactly like that.  He would have made me think of the positives, rather than the negatives.  He would have looked for the good, and found it.  So, I turned my thoughts around.  I tried to think how Rowan thinks.  And it helped.  It actually helped a lot.

So, Day +25 or Day +100...either way...he's still here with us...he's still fighting...and God is still using him to teach us valuable life lessons. 

I will continue to count both days, because they were both part of God's plan, but I will first and foremost appreciate that there is a today at all... no matter what it's number may be.