May 2nd, 2025

We spent the morning at UNC meeting with the bone marrow transplant team and infectious diseases team. All donor paperwork and bloodwork is back and everything is still good to move forward on May 14 (donor biopsy) and May 15 (Oliver’s transplant day).

We will be admitted to the hospital on Monday, May 5th to start the bone marrow transplant process. Unfortunately, the surgery to put in his second central line isn’t until 1:00 so we have to only give him clear liquids until then which will make for a difficult morning. After the surgery, we will go to the oncology floor and get settled in our room.

We truly feel so grateful to be able to have Oliver in remission and even to be able to do this transplant. It is, however, extremely overwhelming and especially emotional to enter this process now that Oliver feels better and is acting like a normal kid again. This is going to be a very difficult road and he will be very sick throughout a lot of it which is hard to know as his parents. We are truly in the best hands and feel so thankful for the countless medical staff who have walked with us and continue to take care of us during this journey. We are also so thankful for you.. our friends, family, and people we have never met who have prayed for us, sent us gift cards, letters, and just general encouragement. Thank you for following along with us on this journey and for continuing to support us in the tough days to come. We appreciate all of you so much!

I put a few things on the website under <“How Can I Help?”, Amazon Wishlist> for us to have at the hospital (although I think some generous people already bought most of them 🥰). We gave all our nurses Starbucks gift cards last time we were admitted and felt like it was such a gift to them, so I added those as well as some coffees for us to have in the room. We will be more locked down this time around to reduce infection. Thank you so much for your generosity!