Happy Bone Marrow Birthday! (day 0)

I am overwhelmed with emotion as I try to put into words how I feel about yesterday.  Yesterday, our beautiful girl was given the best gift she will ever receive, our family was given the best gift we will ever receive and there was only one person who could give it.  ONE person out of the ten million people who are registered was a complete 10/10 match to our Cami, and he is a complete stranger.  Yesterday was about Cami, it was about our family and a new life for all of us, but it was also about our hero donor.

His cells arrived around 2PM in a cooler.  When they pulled out the bag, both the nurse and the lab tech commented on what a large donation it was (they were able to get close to double the volume from Cami's donor than the average donor.. yep that's our super-hero donor man).  The cells look just like a bag of blood, but that bag was holding our everything inside.

This is our hospital family (the staff here at Primary Children's ICU), they came in with giant smiles on their faces, singing Happy bone marrow Birthday and showering her with gifts on her special day.  We love this team of people who have fallen in love with our Cami.  You can just see how happy they all are that this day is finally here!

Happy Bone Marrow Birthday sweet girl!

Nurse Nancy and Nurse Aubri tediously checking the cells before hooking them up to Cami... we love these guys so much!

This picture is so blurry, but I love it because you can see Nurse Nancy hanging that precious bag in the background.

The infusion ran for over 4 hours and because of all the pre-meds they had to give Cami, she fell asleep about 15 minutes into the process.  It was a rather quiet afternoon watching that precious gold drip into Cami's veins.  It is a miracle that those cells can be transfused into Cami's central line, then they will eventually find their way and begin producing as if they were Cami's own marrow...  AMAZING!

We are so thrilled that those amazing hero cells made it safely into Cami's body.  I had many nightmares about the plane crashing or the bag cracking open before they made it to her.  Well, thankfully everything went smoothly and they are finally in her little body.  It will be a very long time before Cami is in the clear and now her real battle begins.  Now we wait for engraftment (or for her body to accept the transplant).  The Doctors say on average it takes 21 days for a child to engraft, but it can happen as soon as day 14 or as late as day 40+  we all placed bets on the day we think she will engraft...what's your guess?