A New Chapter

I've been wanting to write another blog post for awhile now. I have hesitated because putting things down into words 'on paper' makes everything that much more real, and that is something that I have been hoping to put off - the reality of what is happening and what is going to be coming. I will keep my words a bit short and let lots of pictures speak for me. Noah has had a stable spring and summer. Due to COVID-19 we did school from home to finish out the year.

Back in April Noah celebrated his 9th birthday!(Which was also his Golden Birthday). God has been so good and gracious in blessing Noah these past 9 years. It is truly amazing to see how far he has come.

We spent a fantastic summer holiday camping for 2 weeks. This was one of our best holidays yet!

Of course, summer was also filled with other fun activities:

We also had a few appointments over the past few months. Each appointment has given us more things to think about and take in, and has brought us to the realization that life as we know it is going to change, whether we are ready for it or not.

Noah's kidney function conitnues to slowly decline. He is now officialy at 21% function. At this point, a typical person would be on dialysis, but for Noah this is a somewhat normal percent and his body, with a some help, is able to handle it. Noah's medication doses are constantly being changed, he is now on a low-phosperous diet and he now also needs an at-home needle to increase his hemoglobin production. These changes are not fun changes - not being able to eat a bowl of cereal with tons of milk for breakfast and having to have more needles is never ever fun (even if Mom is the one who is allowed to give it - which is an entire story on it's own - me becoming a nurse in more ways than I ever imagined).

This also means that we now consider Noah someone with Chronic Kidney Disease and we are starting to talk about dialysis and kidney transplant in greater detail with the doctors. Noah has been on the list for a consult with Toronto SickKids Hospital for awhile now, and we hope to hear from them soon to set up a meeting for November. This will be to discuss a kidney transplany and what that will fully look like. In the mean time, we continue to discuss our options for dialysis and how to make this work the best for Noah - giving his body the help that it needs while keeping life as much the same as possible. This will likely involve Peritoneal Dialysis, which can be done at home by us overnight, so that in the morning Noah can continue with his day as usual.

We do not know in detail how things will go or how quickly we will need to move to make dialysis or a transplant happen. We do hope and pray that we have time to try to find a living kidney donor for Noah to spare him the need of going through dialysis. We have not had our meeting with the transplant specialists, and so we don't know what it all involves, but we ask that you consider seeing if you, or someone you know, would be a match to donate a kidney to our Noah. Please prayerfully think about this. It would mean so much to him, and to us! Here is a link to a little more information that I found online. ' Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has noworries in the year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.' Jeremiah 17:7-8