15 years old, Amazing!

This will be a quick summary, as life is so busy for Adam and all of us.

This year, other than being a noisy, untidy teenager, Adam has:

• been doing year 9 and slowly learning that a little extra effort helps to achieve a better grade! (Yippee!)
• continued as a surf lifesaving member, clocking up 47 patrol hours as well as volunteering time to Somerton Surf clubs first special nippers, Summer Seals.
• competed in R&R (Rescue and Resuscitation) carnivals and state championships, winning his first surf medal!
• become a Youth Ambassador for the Cancer Council
• stayed active doing lots of PE options at school and playing soccer
• been a youth leader at Kids Camp Out
• spent the last few months catching every bug going around - we call it active therapy for a new immune system!
• nearly reached 5 years from his cord blood transplant (deep breath!)

So a few photos and that's all we have time for! Thanks, always, to our wonderful friends and family for your love and support!

August 2014

Life has been busy! Excellent !

We have not posted in a while, for this I apologise. Thankfully, in this case, no news is good news !

We have been getting on with normal life and Adam is engaging with most opportunities that come his way. Last year he had a great final year of primary school taking up lots of school responsibilities and developing his performance skills, as you can see below. This year Adam started at Brighton Secondary School and he has been loving the high school environment and developing old and new friendships. He has been involved in the debating team, Boys Chamber Choir, soccer team and outside of school has taken up drama classes and started netball umpiring.

Adam in school performance - Aug 2013

Adams Primary School graduation - Dec 2013

Collectively we have been very busy with work, school, sport, family and community committments. We are very blessed to have such wonderful family and friends who continue to love us and enrich our lives. Holidays have featured in a big way with our regular journey to Tanunda at Easter, a few bush camping trips and our wonderful trip to Tasmania in January. Some highlights below!

River Cruise in January in Strahan - Tassie

New Years Eve in Hobart

Cradle Mountain in Tassie - Jan 2014

Lochluna - River Murray June 2014

Wilpena Pound 2014

Bush walking in Wilpena Pound July 2014

Roughing it in Wilpena but looking very handsome all the same!

Matthew on stage in mid year drama performance

Matthew continues to love his drama and Alex is into everything he can fit into our schedule, soccer, basketball, piano lessons. We continue to spend the summers on the beach and are all involved at "the club"!!  We have a new family member and thankfully the dog loves him too!

Casper and Tassie in the sun together!

Tassie

Tassie the hunter!

As a family we continue to enjoy each others company and count everyday a blessing that finds us healthy and able to confront lifes many challenges. In love we trust !

We hope this post finds you,and the ones you love, well !

Many blessings the McAllisters

Happy and Healthy

Well it has been a long while since we have posted anything. We were thinking about the blog and thought we would add an update. We have all been so busy living that we haven't had time to blog. Mum is going to run in the city to bay and is doing some fundaising for camp quality so thought it might be good timing to add an update.

Adam has been doing really well getting back into normal life at school with friends and playing sport. We are all enjoying each others company and making the most of being a family. We have done some fun things this year like a family holiday to Day Dream Island which was fantastic and family days rock climbing, whale watching (but someone forgot to tell the whales we were coming) and movie days.

Here are some highlight photos.

Day + 108 - Home sweet home

It is so nice being home and we have just been enjoying quality family time, hence posting on the blog has fallen behind! Sorry, sorry, sorry!

What have we been up to?? Adam has been enjoying getting back into some normal activities, like his usual household jobs, such as emptying the recycling, setting the table and emptying the dishwasher. This has been great for smooth family dynamics and nice to see Adam coming out of 'patient' mode. We have been on a family bike ride every saturday, not a long way, but a good ride. Adam has managed these well and we have all enjoyed getting out and about together. It is easier for Adam to ride than to walk, as you can ride sitting down!!! School work is back on the agenda a bit more consistently, with work from the hospital school and soon some work from Adam's class this year. It all takes a bit of time to get organised and into a routine.

We have had a few visitors too, which has been fun. Adam is itching for more visitors, but we are a bit tentative, understandably, and want to spend quality time with those people who can visit. Slowly, slowly and lots of patience required.

We have enjoyed getting back to our usual 'homely' clinic at the hospital and catching up with all the fantastic staff and our wonderful specialist. Generally, things continue to go well with Adam's progress. The steroids are slowly bing decreased, so soon (in a couple of weeks) the immune suppressing drugs can be decreased also and we can move towards the 'non-isolation' phase. His liver, chest/lungs and skin are behaving. We are praying for this to continue, so the above transition runs smoothly. Decreasing the steroids will be helpful for the family food budget too!

It is nice to be home for so many reasons. The dog is enjoying having Adam home as well !!!

Thanks for your thoughts, prayers and well wishes, keep them coming. I will try and post more often!!!!
Love the McAllisters

Day + 95 and HOME !!

Yippee!!
As some of you probably already know Adam and Marian came home last Tuesday the 8th of March. We did have some indication that this might happen, but were not sure for certain until the day before. We had flexible flights so could have changed them right up to a 1/2 hour before the flight. Thankfully this was not necessary as the team in Sydney decided that, as his liver enzymes were slowly heading in the right direction and his chest/lung complications could be monitored just as well at the W&Ch, we could be looked after successfully in Adelaide for the rest of Adam's post transplant treatment. Even though we are home Adam still needs to go to the clinic 3 times per week and is still in isolation (meaning he can not go to any inside public places without a face mask and we need to generally avoid crowded places, outside and in, and contact with anyone that is unwell). So we will not be throwing a party just yet, but have managed to see some well family members.

It is wonderful to be together again as a family and share more normally the family responsibilities. Darren did a fantastic job keeping on top of things for Matthew and Alexander, and although they were very pleased and excited to see Mum and Adam, they were also both very calm and collected about it. Adam is itching to get back to school and church and normal interaction with the outside world, but we are not quite there yet. Although we are fast approaching +100 days, we are still on steroids and not looking at decreasing the anti-rejection drugs just yet, so are expecting to be in isolation for a bit longer.

As always we are very appreciative of everyones thoughts and prayers, and even although we are home, the journey is not over yet, and we continue to need your support, and we will continue to update the blog!
 
Love Marian, Darren, Adam, Matthew and Alexander

Day +86 and keeping positive

Just a quick update. We have had a busy and lovely weekend catching up with my cousins that live in Sydney and some other transplant recipients we have developed a friendship with. I have also been getting more familiar with Centennial park and Queens park, for exercise purposes!

Last week was quite a busy one too as we had to move out of our lovely appartment in Coogee beach on Thursday into The Centre (the accomodation that we stayed in the first weekend we came to Sydney). It is quite comfortable and serving us well for now. Adam had more tests through the week and his liver enzymes are finally starting to very slowly decrease and some decisions were made about his unsettled chest. It looks like we may be able to think about coming home soon, which would be great.

Darren and the boys had a busy week too and seem to still be coping famously at home. The continued support from family and our church family has helped a lot. We are so thankful for all the prayers and practical support from so many, thank you all.

Hope to have more good news soon.
Love
Marian and Adam and the crew from home.

Day +79 and alot brighter

Why am I brighter ??? Well I would like to say it is because we have a date to go home, but unfortunately no, but the next best thing. On Friday night Adam and I got a surprise visitor at our door ........

It was the best surprise ever, just what I needed to regain some strength to see through the rest of our time here in Sydney. This came on top of some good news on Friday from the specialists in the hospital re Adam's chest. It looks like he has just got some asthma in response to whatever viral infection he may have had a few weeks ago. So there is nothing more sinister going in his chest, which is great news.

We had a lovely weekend with Darren. We finished another, much easier, puzzle and visited Watson's Bay, again (we love it!) and even managed to go out for dinner at a nice restaurant with an outdoor dining area at Coogee (Adam's highlight for the weekend).

Adam's liver enzymes remain a concern, but maybe with the chest resolved we are a bit closer to being able to come home???
Thanks for your continued prayers they really help.
Love
Marian and Co.