After an extraordinary season of fundraising through the Spring and Summer, we were able to raise enough to schedule Harrison's 3rd round of stem cells down in LA. We changed things up a little this time though and ended up brining one of our nurses who volunteered to help out which was no small task! We stayed at some Wyndham resorts through my Mom's timeshare which gave us access to fully stocked 2-bedroom accessible rooms that worked wonderfully for getting Harrison all situated with his equipment and giving Hattie space to run around (in addition to privacy for our nurse). We took 3 days to make the journey from Tacoma to the LA area and made it safe and sound.
The procedure was easy and it was like a reunion with the staff who wanted to hear all about our year. They were excited to hear about Harrison's new gained abilities and were continuing to encourage us and even educated us about a new possible treatment involving HCG injections that have helped spinal injury situations. It's amazing to have a team of folks continuing to think about your family even after you leave. <3 They did the standard IV drip of 3/4 of the stem cells and then had 1/4 of the cells in a nasal spray application.
While it wasn't really a vacation and we set a pretty tough pace every day, we did have a few memorable moments including:
-Enjoying the fireworks from Disneyland from the rooftop deck at our resort in Anaheim.
-Getting a $100 gift card and a free pool cabana reservation with free beer/wine/snacks for sitting through one of those "buy now!" presentations - thankfully I'm good at saying no lol
-Seeing the beautiful coastal highway due to major accidents when we were leaving LA.
-MariClaire getting a chance to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge during a particularly foggy evening
-Locating and safely retrieving Harrison's foam bed in good condition after one of our roof rack straps failed and it flew off the van while on a windy mountain highway.
-Enjoying a much needed break in Bend, Oregon at a new McMenamins (Old Saint Francis School) that had beautiful/accessible outdoor seating with great food.
-While there was hot weather, the wildfires were minimal and we didn't really encounter any until we were already on our way home.
Thank you to everyone who made this journey possible...we are so blessed to have a huge community of supporters behind us and making sure that we were able to make this dream of a 3rd treatment a reality.
We'll post again shortly with some updates on new things Harrison is doing post-stem cells. :)
-Jonathan
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