5 Month Update

 The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
Psalm 145: 8, 9

We have had a few people recently ask us how things are going, commenting that we have not given an update in awhile. I apologize for this. It is so easy to get caught up in our everyday and the blog is definitely something that was put on the back-burner; I often just feel too exhausted to bother.

Noah's biopsy showed no sign of rejection!
The doctor's were thinking that maybe Noah's bladder might be causing some issues. Noah's main urologist is not convinced of because Noah has such a large bladder and he can empty it all the way!
It could also be that the levels of one of Noah's anti-rejection medications was not maintaining a steady enough level continually.
To help with both of these concerns, we have since started waking Noah up in the middle of the night to empty his bladder and to take meds. This has, of course, not been an easy transition. Not getting a full, solid night's sleep takes a toll rather quickly, and the importance of needing to do it fades when all you want to do is sleep! This is true for Noah and myself. 

Physically Noah continues to do well. His creatinine levels have climbed to 180. Although they would like to see it around 140, they are okay with this number because it has remained steady at 180 for a few weeks without climbing. This also means that Noah has now been cleared to have follow ups once a month now, rather than every other week! It is unbelievable how quickly we have gotten back to the appointment schedule we were on before the transplant!

Noah was able to play in his Grade 8 basketball tournament recently and he was so excited about this! He even scored a basket in a game against Uncle Shawn. To see how Noah's friends cheered him on a rallied around him during this tournament was an incredible thing to witness.

Rob has been doing well also. For awhile he had a sharp pain at his incision, which the surgeon said was likely a tear on the inside of the abdominal wall. The surgeon gave Rob 6-8 weeks for it to heal itself and if it didn't, it would require surgery to repair. We are thankful that Rob's pain has subsided, which means that it has healed itself and no surgery is required!

Things are starting to take their toll mentally and emotionally here in our house. 
A lot has happened over the last 5 months and emotions have been running high. 
Noah has been through a lot, his body is working so much better than it was before, which also throws other things (like hormones) into a different rhythm than before and Noah is also entering his teenage years.
It has been difficult to accept that this transplant wasn't a 'magic cure' to fix everything. It has definitely made a HUGE difference! And it has blessed Noah with a different kind of health and life, but...there are still appointments, medication to take and other physical issues to deal with.
We have a lot to navigate, and not just with him, but with ourselves and the other children as well and it has been challenging and exhausting. 

Praise God for new morning mercies, grace and forgiveness!

March 13 was World Kidney Day. In honour of this, the nephrology unit organized some food trucks as a fundraiser and also asked to use Noah's science fair project from this year. 

 Noah's care nurse and the treats Danielle and I enjoyed.

Noah did such a great job on this project, creating a working model of a kidney!

This day was another reminder of how important our kidneys are, and just how much they do for our body.

Taken from the Biblical Creation Facebook page:

THE DESIGN OF OUR KIDNEYS

Your kidneys are a wonder of the human body. These two fist sized organs are located in your abdominal cavity and do the following:

* Filter out waste products from your blood

*Regulate the blood stream to become 51% water. A 5% fluctuation could cause your blood to become too thin and your blood pressure to drop, or be too thick so your heart could not pump it.

*Maintain the perfect concentration of various salts within your body

*Regulate the acid-base equilibrium of your blood

*Secrete hormones that help maintain blood pressure and make red blood cells

Every 50 minutes, every blood cell in your body passes through your kidneys. When a person's kidneys fail, they need kidney dialysis and the patient must spend hours circulating their blood through a very complex machine that is hundreds of times larger and far less efficient than our kidneys.

Evolutionists say the kidneys happened by chance. That they were a useful accident. But we know the dialysis machine didn't come about by chance, and it can only replicate a small fraction of the hundreds of processes which take place within our body's kidneys. The dialysis machine is certainly not as efficient as our own kidneys. It has actually been claimed that the kidneys are the most complicated organ after the brain. Something no set of random mutational changes could ever create.