The First Day of The Rest of His Life

My son officially has three birthdays, I know special right! That is because he is special. So his 1st "Birthday" is the day of his birth, September 23rd, 2009. His second and equally important "Birthday" is May 11th, 2010, the day his Brain tumor was re sected in a 7 hour surgery. His third "Birthday" and now just as important as number one and two was yesterday October 26th, 2010, the day he received his own stem cells back in his body to boost his very fragile and puny immune system back up. I won't lie, we are probably going to celebrate ALL THREE every year FOREVER, a little much? Maybe but for us they are all milestones that make us unique and show us what a fighter our little Kee is.

So yesterday was DAY 0. At approximately 2 pm EST Keegan's stem cells arrived on the Stem cell unit via a container that somewhat looked like a beer keg. What are stem cells you might ask? Well, the answer to that question can be found HERE. Basically they are the "mother cells" of bone marrow. They help the marrow to make more cells of whatever type are needed. So they arrived in this:

When all the doctors, Nurse Practitioners, Interns and nurses were ready, they took his bag of cells out of the "keg".

They were inside a metal container inside the Keg frozen so they took out the metal case.....

Then she took a moment to show me that they were "HIS" cells,

Then they are placed in a warm water bath to thaw them:

Getting ready to draw the cells up into a large syringe:

The Syringe with thousands of Stem Cells in it:

Next, the Intern had to get ready by putting on sterile gloves (notice Kee is passed out from the Benedryll, Ativan, Tylenol and Dilaudid used to pre-treat him):

Next is the video of the actual push of stem cells into Baby Kee, I will warn you, its not very exciting till the very end when I go "WAHOOOOOO" Cancel that, its gonna have to wait until I have better Internet connection, it just doesn't want to upload....the video itself is pretty unmonumentous besides the actual significance of the event. He slept all the way through it and a lot after it. Occupational Therapy came in shorty after the transplant and wanted to work with him, sure, you can try it but it don't be surprised if he doesn't want to partake......and he didn't so he went back to sleep and pretty much slept till today.

Happy Third "Birth" Day My Baby Kee, Today is the first day of the rest of your life!