What I Hope for Most is HOPE!

Today is Kevin's one month anniversary!  Hurray!!  And he is doing everything he is supposed to be doing at this point in the process.  Actually, he is probably better than most.  His blood count numbers are continuing to come up and coming up faster than average.  This week was all about the neutrophils.  They just jumped off the chart.  He is in the completely normal range.  Neutrophils are our first line of defense against infection or bacteria, so having his neutrophils go up means that he is beginning to have an immune system.  Monday and Wednesday were lab work days and Friday was a visit with the doctor.  Wednesday and Thursday Kevin felt really good.  He worked for several hours each day and he started getting a little tired of the walls of our home.  So Kevin had it all planned out.  This was going to be his proposal to the doctor, "If my white blood count is up and my neutrophils are completely normal and rising, I have an immune system.  Does that mean that I still have to wear this mask every time I come to the hospital and could I maybe go out to a restaurant, or see people?"  Well this was going to be an interesting discussion topic.  The Bone Marrow Clinic has a team of 6 doctors and 6 Physician Assistants and we have seen all of them.  Friday we had a really nice Physician Assistant named Kelly.  Kelly explains things on our level so well and she is really easy to discuss things with, so Kevin picked a good day.  Kelly asks Kevin the 100 questions, that he answers every time we go, she looked at his lab work and the numbers were good and then Kevin pops the question.  Well, Kelly in a really nice way, reiterated he could hopefully do all those things after 100 days.  That wasn't really the answer Kevin was looking for.  Kelly then explained it this way.  Yes, you have an immune system, but it is a brand new immune system.  Your immune system is one month old.  It has not been exposed to any germs or bacteria and at this point would not be strong enough to take on that fight.  So we have to allow that immune system to get stronger before Kevin could possibly be exposed to anything.  That makes perfect sense, but not really what Kevin was looking for.  On Friday they did take an extra tube of blood and are performing the first test to determine how the donor cells are performing.  This test will give us a percentage of how many of the cells in Kevin are his old cells and how many are the new donor cells.  We are hoping for a 50/50 at this point in the transplant.  The results of that test won't be back for a week or so.  The good news of Friday was our visits to the hospital have been reduced to twice a week.  So that was reason to be happy.  What will we do with all our time?

On transplant day I started reading a book.  This book is about a man whose wife passed away and then he lost everything.  His business, his home and all his possessions.  He starts walking across the country and the story is of his journey.  Each chapter of the book has a thought.  The one I have liked most is this one, "What I hope for most is hope."  Throughout my life I have had many experiences with Faith and good examples around me of Charity.  I thought I knew what Hope was, but the past couple years have really taught me about Hope.  One of the hardest days since cancer diagnosis was the first time we met with the transplant team.  It was a year and a half ago.  We had this meeting simply to inform us of future possibilities.  We really didn't anticipate Kevin needing a transplant for several years.  The discussion with the transplant team was a couple hours long and we came to learn everything we wanted to know and even a lot of things we didn't really want to know about Kevin's disease.  This day was filled with odds and statistics and treatments and side affects and all the knowledge this team has learned over the many years of studies, to us they were pretty hard things.  To say we left feeling overwhelmed would be an understatement.  That meeting was followed-up with a 5 page letter explaining in detail all the things we had discussed.  We had the meeting, read the letter and then put it away.  We are grateful for the knowledge that science can provide for us, and we trust in the medical transplant team, but if that is all we had, we would feel sad, stressed, overwhelmed and discouraged.  Instead what we strive to focus on everyday is having a "perfect brightness of hope" that comes through our Savior, Jesus Christ.  I have learned to understand hope more than ever before.  Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, he knows all, has felt all and understands perfectly.  We find hope in him and have hope in Heavenly Father's plan for Kevin.  This hope brings peace, comfort and understanding.  It does feel like perfect brightness, in what could be a dismal situation.  I came to find this hope every week in Primary.  We are taught to become like little children and I know why.  They have perfect faith and their eyes shine with hope.  Being in their midst has taught me hope.  Yesterday we were singing about faith, and I asked the Jr. Primary kids, why faith is like a little seed.  I then had 4 children give me a perfect explanation of what faith is, why we want it, what we have to do to get it and how it can grow.  Listening to them each week reminds me that the gospel of Jesus Christ is plain and simple.  Being in the presence of these perfect children each week brings me joy and reminds me to have hope.   Having a perfect brightness of hope is a tender mercy.