Big Changes Coming and Summer Update

It is already August! There are Big Changes coming both in Hana’s life and to this blog so keep reading to find out more. It has been a good summer. One of the things that has made it great is we got to go on vacation! Our summer vacation was centered around going to the Donor Dash – a 5K run/walk in Denver that honors and celebrates organ and tissue donors. Hana’s heart donor, Leo, was from Colorado and his family attends the Donor Dash every year. When I say his family, I mean extended family from a day’s drive away make the pilgrimage to Denver to honor this little boy’s memory. So, this year we decided to attend as well. My parents, two of my sisters and my brother-in-law’s family all attended as well! There were over 50 people on the “Leo’s Pride” team! It was really, really special to be a part of it.

Our summer trip started off by driving from San Francisco to Breckenridge, Colorado via Utah. We spent a week in Breckenridge with my family and then went to Denver for the Donor Dash. After that we drove to Pittsburgh and spent some time with Paul’s family. After that, Paul drove our car all the way back to San Francisco and my parents came out to Pittsburgh and picked up me and the girls and we spent a couple of weeks at their house in eastern Pennsylvania. I feel very lucky that we were able to do all of this and grateful to Paul for holding down the fort back at home while I took the kids to lots of fun places.

But now we are back in San Francisco (and glad to be together again as a family!) and although the weather has been surprisingly nice for August (it is usually cold and very foggy) it feels like our summer is really coming to an end. At the end of the month, Hana will have her annual biopsy. This means that in the Cath Lab they will use the catheter to go into both the right and left side of the heart, measuring heart pressures, taking a biopsy sample and looking at her coronary arteries. Just thinking about it gives me a lot of anxiety about all the “what ifs” so I will just have to keep working on stopping those thoughts in the next couple of weeks because they serve no use. For now, I’ll just focus on keeping Hana healthy so nothing, like getting a cold, delays her biopsy.

So, now for the Big Changes! First, Hana turns FIVE in a week! Second, Hana starts KINDERGARTEN in a week too (on the same day, actually). I can hardly believe it. My heart might break but I think it will be so fun for her. The school is very close to our house, only a block away, so that is really nice. It will be a big adjustment for everyone!

Finally, I am making a big change to this blog. In order to give Hana the opportunity to have a somewhat “anonymous” childhood we have decided to limit what we will share on social media and what we make available online once Hana turns five. Actually, this was something we had decided on when she was born and when she got sick we decided she/we needed all the love and support we could get and we decided to forgo that. We opened up our lives, Hana’s life to all of you. We do not regret that at all. But we feel that Hana deserves the chance to decide what she wants to keep private and what she wants to share, especially as she gets older. Until she can understand what it means to share your life online we will just limit the sharing until she is old enough to decide.

Now, this doesn’t mean that we are suddenly shutting you all out! We will still post updates and pictures but the posts will be password protected. All followers of the blog by email (you receive the blog post as an email) will be emailed the password and members of the Hana’s Heart Facebook group will be given the password. For all the followers of this blog but not by email, I’m sorry, for now I’m not sure how to share a password. If you know, tell me! And if you are a WordPress Whiz and want to suggest another way to protect privacy, please let me know! In addition to all of this, we will still post two public updates about Hana a year (we may still post about events like the Summer Scamper, Donate Life Month etc.). Also, and I hope I never have to do this, but if anything were to really take a turn for the worse than we would certainly reconsider this plan. In other words, no news is good news.

You, readers, supporters have all been a huge, tremendous and powerful force in our lives, in Hana’s life. We are eternally grateful from the bottom of our hearts. It has been a movement that has changed us forever. It has been a joy to share all of this with you. Thank you for sticking this out with us!