One Year Later!

I certainly did not think that this is where we would all be one year ago. Life in 2024 was crazy, scary, sad and just really long, cough cough plus really expensive. It has been over one year from the date of James' transplant and one year since he got out of the hospital!

Just a few days before freedom from hospital!

We knew that James needed a new liver in order to have any chance of survival but we did not know or even hope for how much it improved his and our lives. You all followed along with how well he has been doing! Well the good news is he is still doing great. One year later and his blood work is still doing great, energy levels are high! He got the news just a week ago that it is going so well he can start lowering his cellcept. Quick recap: Cellcept is one of the immunosuppression drugs he was put on, this drug is to prevent his body from "seeing" the cells the new liver sheds into the body. He will lower it slowly over several months and if his bloodwork remains stable, he will be free of 8 pills a day! This could take several months. He could also be off and on them through the years. He will be forever on the tacrolimus(main suppression drug) and this can range a bit as it is based on levels in his blood, currently he is only taking one pill of this though!

He has one other med to be taken off, if his bone scan goes well. He is at risk of osteoporosis due to being malnourished for so long. If the scan goes well it is the last drug that he was on before the transplant to go away! He could for a time be down to one med and vitamin D! It is amazing!

Neither was cooperating with updated picture... Men!

Of course physically isn't the only thing that needed to be recovered from. Though in this case it was us as a family that needed to recover, financially. We were careful but supporting two households even with the help our parents gave us, like not charging us for child/dog care, driving the kids to Edmonton for us paying for some of the kids food. We were paying for a hotel(6 weeks) plus mortgage. We had to pay for our food(mine for the first three weeks, then both for 3 weeks), plus some of the food for at home. Thank goodness I did not have a big appetite (and don't tell James, I didn't often eat lunch). We thankfully had credit lines when we ate through the money we had managed to save. After we were home and backish (June, I returned for a month)(James in September) to work we lived without for ourselves and all spare money went to paying off what we borrowed! A year later we have done it and even have a savings again!

Of course that money is already spent, technically, thanks to all the house renos, plus the garage we want to build over the next several years. Our goal is that we won't use any borrowed money to do those, so we are putting as much away as we can. Hopefully this year we will replace the basement floor, and repair the basement bathroom! The basement bathroom needs the ceiling taken down and replaced(we are moving a vent to the upstairs bathroom while we do that, so that floor as well), the vanity replaced, maybe the toliet and some minor caulking of the shower. We also want to take the kids on a cruise in the next couple years! But other than mortgage and car, we are debt free! Yay us!

So a year later James is thriving and busy making plans for all the things he couldn't do before! We are financially okay(current cost of living can't really ask for more than okay)! The kids are healthy and back to all their after school activities and spending time with friends! Here is hoping that 2025 will be our year!