A Point of Order, Day +40

First I cannot believe that this is day +40, that means Olivia has been in the hospital for 50 days (the 10 days before transplant and the 40 days post transplant). In some ways I can't believe we've been here that long, in other ways I feel like I've felt every aching moment away from Peter. Peter and my mom are leaving today to go back to Texas and it's so hard to see him go again. I know that he's well loved and cared for but he is my baby, my last baby and I'm missing his short and sweet baby phase.

Now for a few points of order (don't you just love Parlimentary Procedure, the sorority girls reading this will know exactly what I'm talking about, good Old Robert's Rules).

After my news yesterday about the gift we received from the Pennies for Nicoll Foundation I've gotten a lot of questions about the NFT trust for Olivia. First of all THANK YOU for your gift in Olivia's name, we appreciate it more than you know. Secondly I apologize for any confusion in the process, we were trying to make it easier for our friends and family members who wanted to make a financial contribution to Olivia's treatment. If a contribution was made in Olivia's name I can assure you that we will receive those funds! Perhaps my law school graduate friends would be able to explain this better but the way we understand it is as follows. The National Transplant Foundation is a 501C3 organization, and they established a statewide fund to collect and hold the funds. The non-profit status means that donations made to the donations made to the fund are tax deductible. Since we are living in North Carolina the money is going to the North Carolina National Transplant Fund in Olivia's name. We are using the funds to cover medical expenses that are not covered by insurance including out-of-network charges, perscriptions, medical supplies, etc. We are reimbursed for those items from the fund up to the total amount that was donated to the fund in Olivia's name. I hope this helps answer some of your questions. On your receipts it may say that you made a contribution to the North Carolina Transplant Foundation but I can assure you that in the end we are receiving the money and we appreciate it so much!

Now onto the second point of order, Olivia's new DNA. I think this chimerism stuff is fascinating. Olivia does now have 2 different types of DNA. Olivia has a new immune system and blood making factory. The chemotherapy and ATG killed her bone marrow (the blood making factory) and the transplant replaced those cells and we've just been waiting for them to grow so she's strong enough to leave the hospital. The donor was a male with O+ blood type so from now on if someone were to do DNA testing of Olivia's blood cells it would show that she was a male with O+ blood type. If they were to do DNA testing of another area of her body, a skin sample for example, it would show that she is a girl. The word chimerism comes from greek mythology, a chimera was an animal that was comprised of multiple species.

I hope this helps answer some of the questions. In other news we are scheduled to be discharged from the hospital on Thursday. The doctors were fine with discharging us today but the apartment wasn't quite ready for us to move in yet so we will be here in the hospital a few more days so that we'll have time to get things in order before discharge. The timing ends up working well since this weekend is Labor day and Mike has a 4 day weekend. We're hoping that he will be able to get to Durham in time to see Olivia's confetti discharge party.