Day +674

Team James - 

I know many of you have been wondering how James is doing and I am thrilled to say that things are going very well.  We are back home as of Wednesday afternoon and James is on the mend.  His energy is coming back day by day and he has a few pounds to regain but other than that things are great after our 5 day stay at Lurie.  All signs are looking this this was 100% Rotavirus and it just hit James really hard because of his challenged immune system.  This is tremendous news for a number of reasons.  First and foremost, nothing more serious was causing the issues James was experiencing.  The brain MRI came back with zero issues and looking great.  Second, there is an explanation for why James was not feeling well.  In this journey there are often unknowns and for those of you that have had to deal with medical issues personally our in your family/circle of friends you know that the unknowns can sometimes be harder to deal with that bad news.  And last but certainly not least, James' GVHD did not rear it's head as his immune system activated to fight off the virus.  This is really critical and a very positive outcome... the last few times James has been sick his GVHD has flared up and caused all kinds of other issues (case in point, killing his hair follicles and attacking his skin).  None of that happened this time.  James' immune system was able to slowly fight off the virus without attacking the rest of his body at the same time.  Granted it's not "normal" to spend nearly a week in the hospital on IVs with Rotavirus, but the that out of the fold and everything else has been very positive.  

Also - thank you to everyone that has signed up for the blood drive in December.  We're ~50 enrollments so a good start.  Last year we hit 253 and there is no reason we can't beat that number this year with all your support.  THANK YOU!

- James, Dan, Rita and Baby Maeve

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