China Trip Part One!

Well.. Hello everyone. We've been back from China for about 3 weeks now! Sorry for the late update but getting things back on track here at home with Arjay has been hectic. Upon our arrival, we have had loads of appointments and therapy sessions that has kept me very occupied. I intended to update this blog while in China but unfortunately we were unable to access it from there.

The trip to China was interesting to say the least! The flight was very long but having my mother accompany me was a blessing. Arjay was a pretty good traveler! He did way better than I had expected! There were two Chinese interpreters to meet us at the airport with the hospital shuttle. They took no time in taking Arjay from me and smothering him with affection. At the hospital, we were pleasantly suprised to see other American families in addition to people from other countries as well. It was a very warm, friendly, loving, and supportive community and we all bonded throughout our stay.

Our room was very spacious equipped with a bathroom, 2 beds, a loveseat, a dvd/plasma screen, refrigerator, microwave, storage units for clothing, a phone, work station, and two night stands. We settled in pretty quickly and wasted no time in rearranging the furniture to give us a more
home-like feeling! There was a fully equipped kitchen for cooking so I went across to the shopping center "The Lotte Mart" and bought some groceries.

Arjay wasn't due to begin treatments until the following Monday, which was 3 days away, so we took that time to get acquanited with our new surroundings. Monday finally rolled around and the doctors began to order some blood work while Arjay began his therapy sessions. The nurses struggled to get blood from him because his veins are very tiny, which is something he got from me..unfortunately! However, after several heart wrenching sticks, they seemingly got enough for testing.

Arjay's first therapy session was LOUD!!! He cried at the top of his lungs and just plainly did not want to cooperate at all. His therapist, Owen, seemed a bit apprehensive to push him as hard. I guess that could also be because I was standing right there. I made it very clear to him that Arjay was there to receive an intervention at it's best so crying or not I expected him to WORK HIM!!! I hated to see him cry but we were on a mission! Around his third day he warmed up to Owen and things got better between them ! LOL

The blood work finally came back and the nurse said "the doctor would like to see you concerning your son's bloodwork". WHAT?! Oh God.... please no more bad news! They revealed to me that Arjay's blood work had come back and he could not get the Umbilical Cord Blood stem cells which we had damn near traveled across the world to get!! WHAT!!!!!Did you know your son was Rh negative, they asked? I replied that I did'nt and they proceeded to explain the rest.

In a nutshell, being Rh- is very rare because most people are Rh+. Majority of the donated cells are taken from Rh+ mothers. Therefore, if Arjay was to have those cells transplanted into his body, it would be rejected, cause his blood to coagulate, which is FATAL. Just as my heart was sinking, they rebounded and said that we had an alternative. Instead of the Cord Blood cells, Arjay would have to receive just the Cord cells. That way there's no blood involved at all.

Great! The problem was, I knew absolutely nothing about these other cells. As God would have it, the Cord cells are actually considered the better of the two because it is in a more pure state! Whew! That was close!

I'll end here and give you a continuation with Part Two tomorrow. Giving account of our experience in China is toooooo long for one blog. So I've decided to do it in sections. I'll try to upload pics also on tomorow's blog.