The Girl is a Star

But you already knew that, right? Our little sweetheart continues to charm the Seattle Children's staff including Dr. Reyes, who says she is perhaps the cutest transplant recipient he has ever seen.

A few newsworthy items from Sarah's clinic today:

Our little chunkamunk is tipping the scales at 18.1 pounds.  Besides regaling us all with her sunny personality, this girl can eat!  Seeing the difference between pre-transplant and post-transplant has been amazing. Sarah is up to three jars of baby food mixed with oatmel every day AND is still nursing 4-5 times per day. "Wow" was all her nutritionist could say.

Due to her high consumption diet, she has moved from 7th to 31st percentile in weight for her age. Incredible.

Some of her lab counts were high but those are due to the steroid prednisolone that she has been taking. Dr. Reyes told Patty to reduce the dosage to every other day and hopefully within a month, Sarah will have reached the point that she can drop that med.

Along those same lines, in a month when she is off the pred, she will move to clinics once a month, then every three months than six months, then once a year! The once-a-week labs will continue for the time being.

There had been some questions regarding taking Sarah certain places or exposing her to too much sunlight. Dr. Reyes dissauded our fears by telling Patty to "treat Sarah like a normal child." Pretty funny. He said take the same precautions you would with any other children like  wearing sunscreen outside. But he basically said we could take her out wherever we want and that we could get a dog (this is worth another thread entirely - our other kids have been asking for a dog for sometime). He even told Patty several times to let her roll naked on the sand during our vacation! So audacious.

We are tickled pink with all the good news regarding Sarah. We have all truly been shown God's immense grace through this experience. With every little milestone, we take another leap for joy.

Thanks for sharing the ride with us.

Kirk