We are the Dragons

I'ts a book written by Max. You may need help translating- but you're own your own.

Merry Christmas!!

3 weeks In

This is a football post. We're three weeks into our 2009 season. Once again I have not been keeping consistent with the updates. It was a lot easier to make consistent entries when we were trapped in the hospital and there was nothing to do. So onto football.
Week 1 was brutal. Brookside Christian was a good team, and we were not. Then. We had the wrong scheme in place the first half to counter their speed, and we did not really block anyone nost of the night. We've learned from that and gotten better.
Week 2 was a terrific win for us. We really should have beaten Delhi by 4 touchdowns or so. We had 2 TD passes called back on rediculous penalty calls, and the ref was telling the other team he'd do what he could to make sure they'd win. No joke. So anyhow, we had a 7-0 lead with time running out. Delhi is driving, and gets to the 1 with no timeouts and the clock ticking (about 40 seconds or so). We stop them 4 times from the 1 to win the game. Really cool.
Week 3 we travel to Galt HS to play Jim Elliot. Once again we improve some more and we come away with a handy 21-7 win. Blocking is getting better and better and the young guys get experience with being o-lineman.
This week we have Sierra Rite of Passage at home. It looks to be a fairly evenly matched game. W feel like we'll win if we play good. We'll need to limit our mistakes (penalties and TO's). If we can succeed in those 2 areas I think we'll be fine.
We're happy about being 2-1 and looking forward to our next 2 games at home.
I'll try to keep up on this, but we all know how it goes.

-Coach Herlehy

Swine Flu?

Swine Flu? I say Pansy Flu. So we had an official case of the H1N1 Flu virus (AKA- the Swine Flu). Jamie and I went to the coast and when we returned found that young Samuel had been running a fever since that morning. The fever was there, but with Motrin in the system he was totally normal. We had him tested (swabbed) for the swine Monday morning when Max got his blood draw, and it came back positive.
So yeah we were worried some. The news makes it out to be Ebola. But in the end Sam only fevered for 2 days. Nothing serious. Bay had a fever for only one morning, which caused us to keep her home from the first day of school (talk about a 6 years old's world coming to an end).
Max was fine. Jamie and I felt tired, but that could have been tied to our weekend at the coast. Hey-O!
I say Pansy Flu. That was seriously the sissiest flu bug we've had in our house ever. That's right- I'm taunting.
First week of football done. Looking good. We got in full pads Friday. It will be interesting to see who emerges as our #1 TB. More to come.

Practice Begins

First Practice of the 2009 Season for both the Varsity and JV football teams will be Monday August 17th from 3:30 to 6:30. All players must have their physical paperwork turned into the school office, and have recieved clearance from the school before they are allowed to participate in practice.

New counts

So they took new counts and things are still looking good. They have 3 different measurements when they look at the immune system: t-cells, b-cells and monocytes.
Max is 100% Sam on the t-cells and monocytes and 99% Sam with the b-cells. They want it to be 100% Sam, but 99% at this stage is not a problem.
Otherwise things are going well. Kidney tests are not great, just a little out of the normal peramiters. So they took him off a med.
All else is still good. We're starting to wrestle again, and getting more and more active- and less and less pampered. So that is good.
Football starts next week. Should be a very exciting season. First home game is Friday September 11th vs Brookside. JV will face Del Oro JV. That may be a doozy.

From Davis?

I knew a Sarah Simpson at Davis. I have a sarah simpson 'follower' on the blog. Are you the same? Can't figure out how to contact you to ask without using the blog. Sorry everyone.

Where have I been?

OK OK. So we got out of the hospital, and I just stopped logging in. I say fair enough- give the guy (me) a break. I just was happy to be home, and when I've had free time at the end of the night between kids going to bed and Jamie and I going to sleep- I've been able to hang out with Jamie!
That's been nice. We didn't spend a night together for 5 weeks.
So I saw Jenny at the store in town and she got after me for not posting any more updates. I said I would and she threatened to hold me to that. So here are updates.
Coming home has been real real cool. The folks around town have worked so hard to make our house ready for Max to come home. We have a lawn for crying out loud! And Sprinklers!
Max is doing better and better just being home and moving around. His numbers keep doing great. His blood draw this morning shows that his platelets have actually reached the level where he is allowed to ride his bike or scooter, so that is a nice step.
He has tons of meds every day. Like 7 pills in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, 5 at dinner, then 2 at 1:30 in the morning. Yep. but hey.
A big step was this past Thursday (I think)- Max got his pick line out of his arm. He had the tubes in there and Jamie and I were doing the blood draws every Monday and Thursday mornings then driving the vials of blood down to roseville. We also had to hook him up to IV fluids at night. A bit of an inconvenience, but that is gone now. That night Max said the dinner prayer and he thanked God for "the best- ... one of the best days of my life" for getting it out.
People have asked about Sam- He is fine. Literally nothing slowed him down after that day. And Baylor is good, we've all settled into our home routine. We have to stay home way more than we normally would, but that is about it. Max wears a mask when he goes outside. We play soccer in the front yard. Max feels as if he is the best goalie in the world.
Ill be doing football updates on a regular basis now. Right now I'm in desperate need for coaches. If anyone out there would be able to help or know someone who could. please have them call me on my cell: 530-613-1054. We start practice Monday the 17th.
Talk to you soon.

Going Home

It will be an even 5 weeks. We're going home tomorrow- Monday July 20th. That's 35 days and 34 nights down here.
Max will still have his share of upheaval and uncomfort- but at least we'll have it at home.
I hope to continue to post things but it may not interest many of you any more. I was wanting to do another movie with Max, but it looks like that won't happen down here today.
Thanks to everyone for their help, their prayers, their time and their love for our family.
We will never forget any of it. I will never forget.

First Movie

This has been something that I have been wanting to do with Max for a while- then especially during our hospital stay.

Of course the quality is low, and the final movie is near totally pointless, but that was the fun of it. I tried to talk him into making a movie with the 'guys' playing a football play. But he was having none of that. Here it is. I really like the credits and just watching Max watch himself in the webcam, more than the movie itself.

setting a go home date

Dr Horne says everything is going great. Max needs to start moving around and eating. His oxygen is great. She thinks that we could be going home as early as thursday or Friday- as late as Monday or Tuesday.
Kevin Haycraft has brought his tractor over to level out the yard for Max's arrival home. There is a small army of helpers. Jenni Fawcettt and the boys (Zac and Chris), Dillon Potter and his mom Stevie, Tyler Furness and Super Dave, Gage and Middleton are there.
Pretty cool.
I may have them dig me a pool while they are there. At least a small football shaped jacuzi.

come home prep

well, we really still don't know when exactly we'll be coming home, but they've started talking to us about discharge. leaving the hospital kind of discharge. It may be a week, it may be two weeks, but it's in the conversation- and that's nice.
Sunday they'll do a Gaft analysis to see how many of Sammy's cells are in there. If his white cells are half as intrusive as that child is- then we're golden.
So Discharge Stuf:
Max will have to wear a mask whenever he goes outside for the next 6 months or more. We have to steam clean our carpets, and any place he would want to go would have to have just steam cleaned their carpets. Limits the choices.
No swimming for 6 months to a year.
Also, dust is bad for him- real bad. And if you've seen our "yard" you would see the problem at hand. It's all dirt. We've been working this summer to pull up all the weeds in order to seed, but now we have to go sod. I think we'll throw gravel down on the side of the house to keep the dust down. We'll see, and we'll figure it out.
Right now it's 11:52 PM. Max just got up feeling bad, and we rushed to the bathroom. His blood pressure is good and he has no fever right now, and we'll try to tuck back to sleep.
I think he'll be feeling better tomorrow. One nurse said she often notices an every other day pattern with BMT kids in the recovery process.
Still, I'm happy to be dealing with all these issues. It's really a good thing.

Did Someone say Discharge?

So not to get to far ahead of ourselves, nor overly excited, but the staff here at ucsf have started broaching the "D" word with us- yes that's right: Discharge. Details about going home. When we might (they think in 2 weeks) what we need to take care of at home (long list I'll cover soon) and all the goodies that go along.
Max is soooo much better this time compared to the last time I came down. His ANC has been up above 500 for 4 days now. This means that mom and dad can eat and drink in his room. He also can walk around the outside hallways if he wants.
He's still dealing with oxygen saturation level issues- pretty much he needs to wear the ox-tube when he sleeps. There are a team of specialists to discuss and pontificate on this, as well as an x-ray and a CAT scan taken of his lungs. The preliminary feedback I got from our night nurse last night (of course nothing from the specialists- they too busy being special together) is that there is a little something in his lower left lung. Probably from so much innactivity- but maybe pnemonia. Not too much to worry about.
We've also been visited by the Infectious disease team. Max has had a nagging, reoccuring fever. Nothing too bad, but the team wants to figure out why it's hanging around. So they'll start trying to eliminate possibilities.
Overall Max is feeling great. He's sleeping right now (9:10 AM Saturday morning). He got up and walked around the room a bunch. Had his playful goofball personality back. Did have a couple of nasty bloody throwups yesterday, but they resulted from him trying to shimmy from bed to gurney, then gurney to cat-scan.

tuesday goings on

While Max is doing better- and he is- there were still some real tough times for him and mom tuesday. He had a free flowing bloody nose for over an hour. Jamie had to try to keep pressure on the nose, while also keeping his oxygen tube in. Max was also throwing up blood, and some bloody tissue yesterday. The docs say this is ok. They compare it to when you have an "owie" and it scabs, then as the wound starts to heal the scab falls off. Well Max's mucusitis cause a whole bunch of wounds in his mouth, throat and stomach (maybe all the way through the other end). The bloody tissue is the scabs sloughing off.
So far today he's been doing well. He had some fever last night, but only 101.2. They have continued to reduce his morphine amounts, and he has not been feeling greater pain- so that is good. They are also reducing the oxygen levels in his tube as they try to ween him off that. He needed it because all the sores in his throat made it difficult for him to get the proper level of oxygen saturation.
I think that's it for now.
On the football front we participated in a passing league contest at Del Oro Monday. While we didn't win any of the 3 contests we gained a bunch from the wxperience. We're going against big high schools and the boys began to settle down as they realized that the other kids were just high schoolers like them. We'll be better next time. Unfortunately Christian Addington, who was tearing it up at WR, broke his collarbone when a Lincoln player tackled him to the ground after a catch. Not supposed to be any contact in these things, so that was deffinately a bummer. He should be back in time for the season.

video of Max

Here is a video of Max from Tuesday. Jamie is with him in the hospital so I can attend football practice (thank you fantastic football coach wife!!)

It's hard to hear Max, but that is because it's hard for him to talk loud enough to hear even when you are right next to him. He has been doing better. They are cutting back on his morphine, and he went almost 2 days without a fever. The fever is back today, but he is still making strides of improvement.

Here is the video:

my roomate- the rattlecan

Max is actually doing better today. The biggest issue is just the rattling that is going on as he breathes. But the docs and nurses have x-rayed him and his chest looks fine. He's doing better. Nothing to get real excited about. Just that the fevers are not as high, and the blood pressure has not really been an issue today, and only one throw up verse multiples. But still- better. Fever never got over about 102 last night and it's been regularly going to 104 every night. He's still sleeping most of the day, and shaking real bad when he stands to go p, but we have a target of when we think he'll start healing these sores.
The doctor says probably around the 13th, 14th and 15th is when they expect to see Sam's white cells coming in and starting to heal him up. Maybe even a few days sooner than that if they cut out his Day 11 Methotrexate (they are leaning toawrds cutting that out).
Football has our first passing league summer contest this monday at Del Oro (5:00- 7:00). We'll be going against Davis HS, El Camino HS, and Lincoln HS. We're looking forward to the experience. I predict we'll be shaky at first, but then settle in and hold our own. Our kids need to see that all these other mythical schools around us are filled with normal high school kids- just like them- we'll just not nearly as blessed since they don't live in Foresthill!

Fireworks

The Fog stayed away this evening (which is actually a pretty big deal) and we had a clear view to a couple of firewors shows. We had a decent view (granted from afar) of a show that looked like it was going on down past the Mission district maybe. Real Nice. Then we also had a view of a show going on over in Marin (even further away).
The PCA (Dave) helped us get the bed turned around so we could better enjoy the show.
Max was a bit disappointed. I think he was expecting them to come all around the building. That would have been cool.
He's also fighting the exhaustion from being so run down and feeling so cruddy. He just did not have enough energy to really have the right amount of patience. But we did have fireworks. And we did enjoy it- I know daddy did.

a Sobering Clip

While evryone asks how Max is, and we usually say things like "oh, he's doing OK" or "he's hanging in there".
The truth can be that he is pretty miserable. It's just tough to say that.
Here is a clip of him sleeping. I think that you can hear the gurgle and rattle of his breathing. The doctor said that he has the worse case of mucusitis that he has seen in a long, long time. he expects it to be another 8-10 days before Max will start feeling any better.

morning of the 4th

It's the morning of the 4th, and I'm back at the hospital. While I was back in Foresthill the changes that Max went through were very tough for me to swallow. He is really feeling crappy. He has blisters that have popped up on his arm. He wears an oxygen tube to help keep his oxygen saturation levels where they need to be. His breathing is all rattly, as the mucusitis has ravaged him with sores thoughout his mouth and down into his tummy.

He goes up and down. He'll be in great pain, then be knocked out with the morphine, then be awake, aware and showing his Max personality. But that does not last long. Maybe 10- 15 minutes. Then the chills start coming back. The pain starts coming back and he'll need to lay down again.

His fever has reached almost 104 the past few nights. Last night they did an x-ray on his chest because they were concerned about his breathing, but everything looked fine. He just has a lot of crap in there from the mucusitis. The picture shows the collection jug of phlegmy garbage that Max suctions out of his mouth. This is from 1 day.

He's excited about the fireworks and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we get some clear looks. The view should br great as long as we're not fogged in.

Sam Side Story

I little glimpse into the world of Samuel Duffy Herlehy- uber competitor.
Young Sam, just 2 days ago, discovered that he could- in fact swin in the shallow end of the pool without his swim vest. Made him feel like quite the big shot.

So yesterday this happens:

(Scene set-up: Samuel and Baylor are eating lunch by the deep end of the pool with mom auntie and grandma. Sam has a handful of food.)
Sam: Bay, first one in the pool wins.
Sam (pointing): Hey Bay- look at that Bird in that tree!
Distraction technique works as Baylor looks away from the pool towards the fictional 'bird in the tree'
Sam shoves remaining food into mouth (he is not a waster), and jumps into the closest pool access to him- the deep end.
Sam, not wanting to get him overflowing mouth of food wet, refuses to put his face into the water, which would actually enable him to swim to the side.
Thus, Sam begins to sink.
Mom needs to jump into the pool to rescue, the uber-competitive, deceitful child.

Dad is so very proud.

Menu Review

Things to avoid from the hospital menu:

turkey sausage- no bueno.

Otherwise things are pretty good. The Very BEST food that you can get in the city comes from Tres Hombritos

They stopped by the hospital this morning to deliver some grubby grub. Here is a picture of the tres hombritos themselves.



Health wise?
Things are progressing just fine. The mouth sores are here, and the docs expect a fever in the next day or so. But the sores have not reached the point where Max is hooked up to a continuous morphine feed yet. Until he's needing 5 or 6 doses/day they won't hook him up on it. Lots of movies and time with the Wii Lego Star Wars game. I'm pretty good. People know me.

Where's Weezey?

Um.... we are definately movin' on up. Check it out.

Day 1

So this is Day 1 (Day 0 being the transplant yesterday). Max woke up chipper, but is just not feeling all that well. 2 throw ups so far, and now he's taking a nap (12:56 PM), encouraged by morphine. Jamie has left the city for the first time in the last 10 days to spend 2 nights at home with Sam and Bay. Tough for her to leave, but good for everyone that we can take time to recharge our batteries.
I plan to watch a bunch of super-hero movies with Max. Right now the X-Men triliogy is being played often. Max's favorite is #3. He likes Jugernaught. I like #2, but I really just like them all. Iron Man is here and I'm hoping to move it into the viewing rotation soon. I may also try to get the Edward Norton Hulk. We like that. Any other recomendations? How was Daredevil? I hadn't heard much good, but Max would like to see it since we play with Daredevil in the Marvel Alliance video game.
Max and I will also be tackling the Lego Star Wars game some more. Love it.
Just had someone come in and let us know that we will be moving to a bigger room. We'll move over to room 749 later today. Still get a view, but the room is bigger and actually more windows.

transplant video

here is video of the actual transplant. Not super exciting, but here it is.



PS- I edited down the video and included some footage of the docs visiting him that day, and the transplant finishing up. I try to play non-sensical word play with the head doc- but he doesn't catch on. You can hear Jamie laugh as she appreciates what I'm doing. That's why I married her. She thinks my stupidity is funny and endearing.

Big Day

So today is the big Day. Max is doing pretty good actually Sleeping right now. They got enough of the stem cells from Sam yesterday. They will start transfusing around 10 AM. I should look just like a blood transfusion. Jamie and I will be hanging out, and worrying more than we need. But what else is there to do on a day like this?
Thanks to everyone for you thoughts and prayers. This will be the start of lots of good. In about 4 weeks we plan to be home and healthy in Foresthill.

Poor Sammy

Yesterday was not one of Sam's top all timers. It turns out he is violently against having people try to make him do something he would rather not do. Like take off his pants so the doctors could access his leg for the fermeral line. Freaked out.
Or accept the sedation drugs in his IV line and go to sleep. He fought like a Bronco for over 45 minutes. 2 grown men basically holding him down. Twisting, punching, kicking, slipping out of restraints. And yellin "I want to get OUT of Here!" over and over again with the occasional "This room is Stupid" thrown in for flavor.
Then when they took out the line is was more of the same. He does not accept defeat well. I think that bodes well for future athletic endeavors.

On the positive side, he was able to contribute these wonderful stem cells from his blood, that will make Max healthy again. This is what all the fuss is about folks.

harvest time

Sam and mom are in room 1231 right now. They are going to "harvest" Sam's stem cells today. Sam has been increasingly terrified of the shots as the past 4 days wore on. I'm hoping that fear is not the same with however they are going to put him down today, but odds are- it may get ugly.
Night was OK. Lots and lots of pee. They gave him something to make him pee. He feels miserable. They have him on round the clock ativan (nausea meds). In the night he woke up nuaseous then had a di-di attack while trying to throw up (4:30). The nurse admitted that she was 30 minutes late on his ativan. So that's how bad he feels.
He doesn't have any chemo today. Just some anti-rejection medicine. I wish I would have had some of that in high school.
Football is doing great. It was great for me to be able to get to 2 days this week. Coach Jim Anderson is keeping things working real nice, and you'll really like what you see from the defense this year. Travis Marshall is going to be a help on O. Smart, tough, good hands.

useless knowledge

I have this thing on my google home page called useless knowledge. It's fantastic. here is the submition for today:
"A bowl of lime Jell-O, when hooked up to an EKG machine, exhibited movements virtually identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult man or woman."

How great is that?

Monday

Tough day for Max today. They have to change the port needle every 7 days for him, and it was time. The port needle is the needle that goes into the "port" in his upper left chest. It is like a small rubber dial about 1 inch in diameter that connects more directly into his bloodstream. It allows the docs to access his blood easier (in theory). Today they had to try 4 separate times. 4 separate 'pokes'. Very tough for Max and mom who was there with him today. They finally were able to get blood from it tonight.
In addition to that trauma, his di-di (diarrhea) hit real real hard today. real hard. And to top it off he has been nausious. He threw up at least once when I was there, maybe another time. Not sure.
The thing is, his spirits have been great throughout. It's amazing.
Another tough chemo day on tuesday, then a day off of chemo on wednesday. Transplant thursday. Dad is nervous.
Uncle D (Denis) came down and spent the day with Max today. That made him very happy. Denis also took Sam tonight. Brave soul. Sam's last GCSF shot is tuesday. He's not a big fan of these. They 'harvest" from Sam Wednesday. He needs to be there around 7:30 in the morning wednesday. Keep your prayers for Sam then too.

Football?... It was nice to get to practice this morning. Travis Greene is gone all summer with an internship. Very glad he gets to do this. We do miss him however. Jace Pack looks to be a very big threat for us on both sides of the ball. I know that football seems trivial at these times, but I love football, and I love my team and my boys. So I will continue to give little mini-updates about the team. It's my blog dommit (think of Eddie Murphy as Gumby nsaying "I'm Gumby dammit)- that's what I was going for there.

Brian Regan

No real reason to delve into Jamie and my's love affair with comedian Brian Regan, but comedy is good at times like this. This is one of our favorite little skits. Especially appropriate for mom and dad in times like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vquDkTw-G-4

Enjoy

Day -5?

I think it's day minus 5. Radiation is done. Diarreha is here. Big time. They no longer take a stool sample- it's a pool sample. Hey-o!

We have a chemo called Thiotepa today and tomorrow. He'll need to bath three times a day with these and change his dressings each day. He hates changing his dressing. They have to do this with thiotepa cause it seeps through his poors, and if it's not wiped off it will irritate his skin.

Max is doing real well. There a picture of him making Flubber with Kim the Child's Life Specialist. He really likes her. Its fantastic that hospitals provide this service. There's also a picture of Max with the Lego dumptruck that Kaitlin and Conner dropped off.

Sam and Bay come down today with Bob and Wilma. Sam starts his shots today. First one at 3 today. Be thinking of the poor fellow. His coping skills are near non-existant... on a good day.

hello fever, and what a view!

Well good morning 100 degree fever. We were thinking that you weren't going to be here for a few more days... but come on in!

It's like that cousin that shows up. Maybe like cousin Eddie from Vacation. But what are you going to do? Can't just tell him to leave...

Max had a slight temp (about 99.4) throughout the night, and this morning was at 38.4 C, which makes things easy to undersatand- right? I mean doesn't everyone in America use celcius to measure their temperatures? So apparently 38.0 is 100 degrees in normal world, so 38.4 C is above that. Sure I could have gone to a webpage and converted it, but now you too can experience the thrills that I do.

We're thinking that this may be the bug that Sam and Bay had before we left. It's like a 24 hr fever, but the really nice thing about it is that is comes with sores in the mouth. Cool huh! They took cultures, and have him on antibiotics, so it is what it is.

Positive note? The view is great. You can't tell in the pictures, but we can see barges coming in and out of the bay. I could tell you that we sit and dreams about riding out on the barges and how they symbolically represent us leaving the hospital... but we don't. Just a cool view. It'd be even cooler if we could see the ballpark!

We had our 5th radiation (out of 6) this morning. Despite the fever Max held still for the duration, and we actually stayed on schedule this morning (to a degree). Last radiation around 2:30 today.

video chat

We thought it might be nice for Max to see others, and for others to see Max, so Jamie and I have webcams and you can do a video chat with us so you can talk with Max. Either Jamie or I will be in the room at all times. Jamie is jamieherlehy@gmail.com, and I am jimmyherlehy@gmail.com. Gmail makes it really easy to do the video chat. Maybe others do also, but we've been happy with this.
We think they have the raqdiation machine fixed now so we'll be back on track for an 8 am session. We'll see. After tomorrow (finishing off our radiation) he will have 4 days of chemo, one day of rest, then one day of chemo before his transplant. They mark these days as day -8, -7 etc. (today is day -7 friday is day -6) The transplant day is day 0. I'm filling you in on this cause I think it's kinda interesting and I may use this terminology in the future.

halfway done with radiation

3 out of the 6 radiation treatments down. It's a full body radiation. He stands in the cage wears a harness, and holds onto handles. I'll see if I can swing a pic somehow.
And the radiation was supposed to be at 8 this morning, but the machine broke. Comforting. We finally got in at 2.
Transplant is scheduled for a week from today. Sam will be down here saturday early afternoon. He checks in at 3. He gets 4 days of GCSF injections (sat, sun, mon, tues) to help boost new stem cells. He won't care much for those.

cousin Mike

Side note- My cousin Mike is battling Hodgkin's. He has a blog also. He started his own successful advertising company. Needless to say, that his writing is way more engaging and entertaining than mine. I just wanted to get this address out there for others who may want to keep up with him. I know I had mentioned it to Denis.
http://myrecurrence.blogspot.com/

Radiation 2 of 6 coming up. They put him in a wheekchair, and cover him with blankets to wheel him down the hallway. They may be magic blankets, but I fear that we are operating in the arena of "if the germs can't see him, they can't get to him" theory. Not super reassuring.

Some Pics

Here's a pic of his hospital room and a pic of Max in bed. He's real tired right now and his tummy's hurting. I'm going to jump on Webkinz and play some games to earn him some webkinz money. Cause his pet leopard- named Leopard- is hungry.

Day 1- morning session

Max had his first raditation just a bit ago. He has to stand up with this harness around him for about 20 minutes or so during the radiation. Wasn't his favorite thing in the world, but I think it went fine. He's not feeling great right now- he's taking a nap in the room. I think a certain degree is about his nervousness, and unfamiliarlty of everything.
My thoughts on the hospital so far? Lots of scrubbing. 2 minutes with sponge up to forarm, then alcohol gel on the hands, and if you leave the floor... all over again. I think he'll be fine. Waiting to see how he handles the radiation. They'll give him some morphine when he needs it. I'm hoping that he doesn't turn into Christopher Walkin from the Deer Hunter.
I'll keep things going as much as I can.

Hidey-Ho!

So the whole point of this blog is to serve a couple of purposes. Primarlily I want to be able to share updates about Maxwell, my son who is undergoing a bone marrow transplant at UCSF on Thursday June 25th. I also plan to use this blog as a forum to share my thoughts about football in general, and my football team in particular.

I'm the head varsity football coach of the Foresthill Wildfires in Foresthill CA. We're a small high school of about 250 kids. We opened in 2003, and got stadium lights last year. Small town football as it's meant to be.