‘Twas the night before Christmas 2015

The chocolate chip cookies are ready to go, the milk and fresh carrots in the fridge…Addison is using every trick in her book to ensure Santa stops here tonight. She is at the perfect age to really love and appreciate the magic of Santa. Sadly, this also means Aaron has been resorting to the “Do you want me to call Santa??” line when the Princess has him so exasperated with her particularities. LOL. The funniest/meanest thing is that she really believes her Daddy might call Santa.

Over the past few weeks we have reached another big milestone along this transplant journey. Addison has started taking one of her two anti-rejection meds in pill form!! Wahoo! For the past 4 years and 7 months (not that I’m counting), the pharmacists at BC Children’s Hospital have been specially compounding her meds into a liquid form. This involves cracking open dozens of capsules and mixing the drugs with a sweet syrup concoction to make it palatable to kids. Well with some coaching from this great online instruction video developed by researchers in Calgary, Addison was a pill-swallowing champ in less than two weeks. She is pretty proud of herself for becoming such a ‘big girl’. We will wait a while before switching her other med to pill form because the capsules are about four times bigger!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A few weeks ago, the McYongs also took part in the annual #OperationPopcorn with BC Transplant, which happens at hospitals right across BC. It’s a chance for us to thank the nurses, doctors and hospital staff at BC Children’s Hospital who are champions of organ donation. These are the people on the front lines who are with families when they are faced with a tragedy, yet they are able to ask about organ donation so that life can go on.

We also got a chance to celebrate Christmas at our favourite event every year with other recipients of these life-saving gifts – the Children’s Organ Transplant Society party. We love catching up with our extended transplant family and seeing the transplant kids (and their siblings) just doing what all other kids do at this time of year – eating too many cookies, running around with each other, hanging with Santa Claus.

Brynn and Addison – heart transplant buddies. Bryan is celebrating 15 years post-transplant!

I know I haven’t been that diligent at posting over the past few months, which I suppose is a good thing in some ways. This means we are just too busy living and not dealing with a long list of medical interventions!

Tonight, Aaron and I are under strict orders to go to sleep early because Santa is coming. Can’t wait for the fun in the morning.

Sweet dreams to all of you and Merry Christmas Eve!

Love,
Elaine, Aaron and Addison