Tonight, like most evenings, we had dinner together as a family and after cleaning up went to the living room to play.  As always, we played some Thomas the Train, we played some ball, and we “wrassled” as Ellery Kate calls it. Life could not be any better for our family than it is right now.

It was a beautiful day. I had just been to our annual Vanderbilt Employee Celebration Picnic where I'd reconnected with some old friends. Following the pinic I walked over to the Children's Hospital where I met Alison for Witt's two-month checkup. While waiting for Dr. Dees to step in we planned a picnic by the pool and talked about the vacation we were planning in two weeks. Life had never been better. Little did we know our lives were about to change forever.

April has always been special to me. In years past I've always welcomed April with the new season of beautiful weather, blooming flowers, green grass, and baseball's opening day that it brings. This year I found so many more reasons why April is a special time of year.

It has been over a month since my last update but that's not for lack of news. We've had a wonderful and quite eventful month. So eventful in fact I haven't been able to find the time to post an update. So forgive me but I'm going to try and recap the last month's events in one blog update while trying not to write a novel in the process.

First, Witt mastered crawling about three weeks ago and is always on the move now.

Back on March 26, we held our Cross Country for COTA 5K to benefit the Children's organ transplant association. The event, under the leadership of Dan and Marla Albert and through the hard work of many volunteers, was a huge success. Despite a pretty scary forecast the morning of the race we had a big turnout including twenty brave souls that came out and registered the day of the race despite the weather. We had a great time and raised a lot of money for COTA in the process.

Witt got a great report from Dr. Dodd yesterday. His liver enzymes continue to trend down and are at their lowest point since the beginning of January. His heart is doing great and he's starting to beat the cold he's had for about four weeks now. We don't have to go back to see Dr. Dodd for two weeks and unless his liver enzymes spike back up we don't have to go back to the GI doctor for two months. Poor Ellery Kate will be heart broken when she finds out we're not going to see Dr. Dodd, Nurse Judy, Nurse Michelle (aka Emily), Miss Vivian, Miss Daphne and Jason next week. She gets so excited on clinic days! Yesterday Miss Vivian made her day with a cherry popcycle.

Witt got a good report from both Dr. Dodd (transplant cardiologist) and Dr. Gillis (GI specialist looking at his liver). His liver enzymes went down slightly and the rest of his labs looked good. The doctors are hopeful that the elevation in his liver enzymes was caused by medicine toxicity and that if they can keep his Prograf level where they want it the problem will go away. Dr. Gillis said she'll continue to watch his labs and as long as they continue to trend down then we don't have to go back for two months. However, if things change she might want us to bring him in for a liver biopsy.

We got a good report today from Dr. Dodd. Witt's labs looked a little better and his echocardiagram and ecg both looked good. His liver enzymes were still a little above normal but had come down considerably from last week. She told us today that she was optimistic that they would continue to come down. She had considered that it might be CellCept (one of Witt's medicines to prevent rejection) causing the elevation and that she might try a different drug if they don't come back down to normal soon. We see the GI specialist next Wednesday and we're hoping that his liver enzymes will continue to trend down so that they won't want to do a liver biopsy. Aside from all that Witt and Ellery Kate both have been fighting a nasty cold for about ten days now but they're handling it well and are pretty much all smiles as usual. I've never seen so much snot in all my life. Hopefully they'll be over it soon and won't pass it along to the rest of the family.

Cross-Country for COTA 5K Race

Taking Place at Franklin’s Harlinsdale Farm

to Raise Funds for Life-Saving Transplant

The good news is there's no bad news. The bad news is we still don't have any answers. Witt's ultrasound last week was normal and the results from last week's bloodwork were all good. There are a few tests that we don't have the results for but so far everything looks good. If the remaining tests come back with good results they'll continue to monitor his enzymes for a few more weeks and if they remain high they'll consider doing a biopsy of his liver. We are praying that it won't come to that and that his liver enzymes will drop to normal levels and stay there and we'll be able to put this all behind us.

Witt had his abdominal ultrasound today and everything looked good. We also got back the results from his viral panel and all the tests were negative except coronavirus. After seeing that he was positive for coronavirus I of course jumped over to google to try and figure out what that meant and quickly learned that it is one of the viruses that can cause the common cold. Given that Witt has been fighting a little cold this makes sense. We're still waiting on the level of Cellcept in his blood and are seeing the GI specialist tomorrow morning. We're praying that tomorrow's visit brings good news.