#HILLOFAJOURNEY

Thanks Garth Brooks for that wonderful song however, I interpret those words a little differently now. We have been lucky to meet so many incredibly strong families along our journey so far. There is something to be said about being able to relate to people going through a similar situation as you. Although we are all at what we would consider a challenging - or low in our lives, we have been able to create friendships that help get us through it all. Their victories become y

Today we had to pack up and say goodbye to Dude and Jax as we sent them to Colorado to stay and play with my (Jordan's) family. For those of you that know me, you know I am a crazy dog lady so you can understand how hard it was to come to this decision. I just need my emotions to catch up to my logic. Going to miss our boys so much but know that they will be on an extended vacation in Colorado. BIG THANK YOU TO MY COLORADO FAMILY! So, we our family has temporarily gone from

We received the wonderful news that we were able to continue to care for Hudson at home. This is a little different than being 'discharged' from the hospital because we (Morgan and I) will continue to provide a heightened level of care for Hudson but we now have the opportunity to do it from home as opposed to a hospital room. We were sent home to work on two things: manage and grow. Manage - We are now running a small pharmacy out of our home. All of these medicines will hel

This past week was the week we have been looking forward to since finding out that Hudson's Kasai procedure failed. We knew the evaluation days would be long and information filled but nothing we couldn't handle. We were lucky that my dad was able to fly out and be the extra set of ears during the evaluation. Hudson enjoyed listening to his Grandpa read him the latest Model Railroader magazine! First day of evaluation Met our coordinator. We sat with our transplant coordinato

They prepped us that it had to get worse before it got better. I mentally prepared myself for that - or so I thought. Seeing Hudson unable to do an essential thing like eat breaks my heart and brings tears to my eyes even now. My stomach drops like I am on a rollercoaster and it takes everything I have in me not to cry in front of him. I guess I never thought that when they said he would decline, it would be so rapidly. He was 'fine' last week. I looked at the pictures I had

Hudson's breathing and labs have improved enough for us to be moved from the ICU to the acute surgical/transplant floor. Today we will focus on Hudson tolerating feeding by mouth so they can take out the feeding tube. Tomorrow starts the official transplant evaluation process. The good news is a lot of the testing and imaging has been completed so the schedule should be a little lighter than originally anticipated. We will meet the entire transplant team over the course of t

Hello all, To say the past 48 hours have been eventful would be an understatement. The important thing is that Hudson is trending in the right direction and doing better. A very brief highlight of what we know so far: Hudson was in septic shock when he was admitted - thank goodness we recognized something was not right and acted on it. His labored breathing was associated with the acid that his organs were producing as a result of the body fighting the infection - This is ge

Yesterday, Hudson woke up from his nap breathing differently than he had before. He had a temperature of 102 and started looking pale. I knew something was wrong when he didn't like my singing (because everyone who knows me knows that I have a voice of an angel) We went to the closest ER (Swedish in Ballard by our house) to ensure he could get emergency care should he need it and then transfer him to Seattle Children's via ambulance. Hudson was admitted to the Children's ER w

We received our schedule for the transplant evaluation process. We will undergo a 2 day evaluation on Jan. 17th and 19th in which we will meet with various doctors, nurses, social workers, nutritionists and psychologists as well as conduct labs, ultrasounds, CAT and CT scans. The transplantation team at Seattle Children's will review the results of all the tests and go one of three ways: First option is that they could tell us that Hudson is too healthy at this point in time

Since publishing this blog, I have had people wondering what has happened with Hudson and our family up to this point. There are three additional pages to this website. You will see the page options on the upper right corner of the website. If you are on your mobile, you can select any page from the menu button located at the upper right hand corner of the page. Note to Readers: Check out a quick note from Morgan and I to you the reader Background: Provides a history of what