What I did on my summer vacation

Yes, the blog is on a time delay. :( I am ever so slowly getting in the swing of things with summer over, school in session (since August 12th), and Abigail long gone to Idaho for almost 4 weeks now. In that 4 weeks we have been trying to adjust to being parents of an only child at home and she has been trying to adjust to *being* an only child! Enough said. 

So, what I did on my summer vacation.....   

Okay, so it wasn't really a "vacation" but in early August I took a quick trip to San Diego. I went to accompany Jordan during his stem cell donation. He had signed up a year or two ago and he came up as a match for someone. I left on a Sunday and by Tuesday evening I was back home ready to begin school year again the next morning. 

It is amazing that this young man is so willing to do such a selfless thing to help someone else, someone that he doesn't even know. His stems cells will be going to a woman who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. 

This is the machine that pulls the blood out of one arm, sends it through tubing and into the machine. It then spins the blood, separates the stem cells and then the blood, minus the stem cells, goes through a "warmer" and is put back in though Jordan's other arm. 

He had to lay still with both arms hyper-extended for about 6 hours and by the end he was very uncomfortable as his arms cramped and his veins spasmed.    

A bag full of stem cells that look suspiciously like tomato soup!

Now we know, he just did it for the t-shirt! ;) 

He earned the shirt that pronounces him a hero, indeed! 

The next morning we each headed home -- me to Kentucky and him to Idaho. No time to sight see but the truth is that I saw something better than the sights of La Jolla  -- our son who did something for someone else that he didn't have to do simply because he could. And I couldn't be more proud to be his mom.