Meeting Hana’s Heart Donor Family

Last month we had the great honor of meeting Hana’s Heart donor family! Before I get more into that I just want to give a quick update on Hana. I know many of you that follow this story also follow on Facebook or Instagram so you probably already know all the latest! Hana had her follow up biopsy done, after her grade 2 rejection, and it came back 1a – a good result! They treat this as “no rejection” so we were feeling very relieved. It was a stressful couple of months. Hana seems to be doing very well on her new immune suppression medication, everolimus and she is not getting any mouth sores which is a very common side effect.  She was so incredibly brave and started swallowing her everolimus pill (before we were crushing it and mixing it with water right before she took it twice a day). She earned herself a trip to Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, a deal I made with her if she started swallowing her pill.

Hana’s lower GI issues have greatly improved but are still not “normal” so we will see, but we will definitely take “greatly improved” over what she was dealing with before we switched her medication. She was complaining of her stomach hurting, which can happen when someone is on steroids. It didn’t seem to affect her much except that she would complain from time to time so I didn’t worry about it too much. We are tapering off her steroids so I figured she wouldn’t have to deal with the stomach pain too much longer. But she seemed to be complaining more and more and not just after eating but also first thing in the morning, before she got out of bed. Since stomach pain was her only sign of her grade 2 rejection in February, the transplant team wanted her to get blood work and to come in so they could check her out and see her echocardiogram.  Everything checked out fine! It was quite a relief! We talked about any stress she might be under or any changes and how the stomach was often “the mind’s eye”.

They also thought that her stomach might not be feeling very good from taking so many medications and switching to pills could greatly improve that. So, since she was doing so well taking the everolimus pills they switched two more medications from liquid to pills. She took them like a champ. I am so proud of her! Seriously, we are also VERY HAPPY to have less liquid medications to deal with. This means less syringes. This means less trips to the pharmacy, actually we can now get ALL of her medications via mail order, so NO TRIPS to the pharmacy. It also means I can prepare pillboxes for the week and the rest of the liquid medications I can draw up a week’s worth at a time. There is just one medication that I have to draw up every morning. It is a huge game changer. If you’ve never had to deal with multiple liquid medications over a long period of time, especially ones that are compounded, expire quickly and need constant oversight, you might not be able to fully grasp what a big deal this is to our daily lives. But it is HUGE!

By the way, Hana has barely complained about her stomach since switching some of her meds to pills! Hana also celebrate her THIRD HEARTVERSARY! We are so lucky and so grateful.

In other news, we went to France for a week in early May. It’s a long story and one that deserves its own blog post, but it may be one that is better told in person. Some stories are just like that.

Somewhere in between going to France and getting Hana’s checked out because of her stomach pain, we met Hana’s heart donor family, the Bibler family. Dave and Kelly drove out to California with their daughter Aubrey. They stayed with Dave’s aunt and enjoyed many of the wonderful things the Bay Area has to offer. A couple of days after their arrival we were able to meet them down at the hospital at Stanford. When the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital foundation got wind that the Biblers were going to be in the area and we were going to meet they started talking about doing an interview/filming of it to help promote the Summer Scamper a major fundraising event that supports the important and life-saving work being done at the hospital. It also is a great piece about the importance of organ donation.

Paul, Hana, Corrina and I met Dave, Kelly and Aubrey at the hospital. We got to show them around much of the “old” hospital – where Hana went while she was on the Berlin Heart. Two cameramen and a sound guy showed up and interviewed Dave and Kelly together and then me. My only regret is that they didn’t include talking to Paul. My understanding is that it was going to be a “mom to mom” type of story so, as you will see in the video, its not quite like that. It is still a GREAT video and Paul is in it, he just doesn’t get a chance to talk.

It was amazing to meet the Kelly and Dave. Now that I have met them, it feels kind of like I’ve always known them. We were able to share many great moments, both on that day at the hospital and later in the week when we saw them again. We had a real chance to bond! We are so grateful to them! They are incredible!

Here it is:
https://youtu.be/FqN3qzb4Uwo

AND if you want to donate to Hana’s Heart Summer Scamper team you can here:
https://my.supportlpch.org/team/226201

This is WHY WE SCAMPER!