Happy Thanksgiving! For all of you who are our regular blog readers, I'm very thankful for you! And as a treat, no boring paragraphs from me! Today I finally put some pictures on the blog for you to see with your own eyes what Mac does daily! I promise to put more on soon!

Here is Mac in the ambulance being transported to St. Jude on July 15. This is when it all began! (You can tell by his cheekbones and tan!)


This is Mac getting platelets in the medicine room.

Mac with the original Team MacAttack!! Dr. Reiss is our primary hematologist and she's a courageous, skillful, caring, genius doctor! Martha is our wonderful nurse practitioner who sees Mac in the clinic. We love her so much! And Katherine is Mac's Child Life Specialist who comes in to see Mac but I usually end up talking her ear off....

These are pictures of Mac at PT with Angela. The stretching part is hard work (for now) but mostly it's fun and games!

This is Mac getting his blood drawn from his central line with Debbie. He gets this done MWF for now.

Here is Mac with Melissa who is one of the great nurses on the 2nd floor. Needless to say we got to know them all and we love them. They truly care for the kids they take care of!

Peter and Annie and Mac in their new Team MacAttack tshirts! (Looks like a good Christmas card photo to me!!)

Here's Mac and my mom - Carmelina - in the waiting room of the Hematology clinic in early November.

Hope you are enjoying your turkey! I'll be asking you to pray again tomorrow; today is reserved for thanks!

Today marks 3 weeks since Mac's last blood transfusion! That's the longest he's gone since we started this whole thing! There were times in the ICU when he was getting platelets twice a day and red blood every other day, so you can understand our excitement! His bloodwork shows signs of a few reticulocytes. He will probably need a transfusion tomorrow (definitely platelets, maybe both), but the goal of this treatment is for the transfusions to be spaced farther and farther apart until he is finally transfusion free. (Red blood cells will come after the ANC and platelets are last.) We're getting there! His ANC continues to move up. He still has a few weeks left on his steroid as the tapering is very slow. It'll be nice to see his cheekbones again!

For those of you who are following our progress, Team MacAttack has raised more than $23,000 and it's still going up! We're in 5th place overall right now, but I think we'll be in 4th before too long. And it's all thanks to you! St. Jude is an amazing place and Mo & I plan on supporting them for a long time in the future. You can't put a price on the life of a child!!

We are also very excited to have Peter and Annie come spend Thanksgiving with us. (Mac said he was getting a little bored with just his parents.) Our Labor Day weekend was kind of a bust, so we're really looking forward to being together and having some fun!

That's it for today. Thanks for checking in and praying for us!

We had a good week - not too much to report. I'm going to take some pictures over the next few weeks and try to put some on the blog. That way you can see some of the St. Jude sights we've been talking about for the last 4 months! Mac is just doing PT, school and clinic visits. He got platelets twice last week, but hasn't had a blood transfusion in over 2 weeks. (Woody, he's still living on your blood!) We are thinking he's beginning to make some reticulocytes (baby red blood cells)! Just a few, but hopefully it's a sign of things to come! He's feeling much better and this evening we were able to stop by a soccer field in Memphis where some kids from his soccer club had games. It was great to see familiar faces!!

Short but sweet tonight. Thanks for reading! And please keep up the prayers!

We had a good weekend and today was clinic and school. Mac gets a little better each day. His ANC moves up and down, but the general trend is up! If this treatment continues to go well, we may be able to avoid a Bone Marrow transplant in the future. They have found possible matches for Mac, but they have left it at that for now. If it becomes necessary, they will contact the donors and do the further testing necessary. But for now, we are all hoping this treatment will get Mac back to normal. So, while we are very thankful we made it through that big hurdle in Sept/Oct, our new prayers are for treatment #2 success. (We're kind of back to square one! In fact, I think I'm going to forget Sept/Oct even happened!!)

Thanks for checking in! I know a lot of you are having an "Ida" vacation. Stay safe!

We did get discharged on Sunday and are back to clinic visits and school and PT. Mac's ANC is going up and he's feeling a little better every day! We are keeping a close eye on his labs like magnesium and potassium and we will start a long slow taper from the steroid today. His kidneys seem ok for now, hope they stay happy.

It's finally not raining in Memphis and it's good to be out of the hospital. They actually have a Fall here, which is so nice. I hope the next entry is more of the same - uneventful!!! Thanks for checking in!