Meet Carter

These pictures are worth a thousand words… Carter has a future in music!

Well I guess that with all the good news we were having we should of seen a little bad news coming our way, because with out bad news there never would be any good news right? In our little world things have been really going good for us. Carter has been doing so well lately and he was even officially taken off his steroids today, so when over the weekend we had problems with an unknown occlusion in Carter’s right Broviac chest tube which turned led to a ruptured Broviac chest tube, we weren’t really surprised by Dr. Giller’s decision to do an emergency surgery procedure to remove the bad Broviac to eliminate any possible infection it could cause we were all for. This bad news was turning to be good news, because he was doing so good Dr. Giller was comfortable to remove the bad tube and not replace it. (Yea!) So he schedules the procedure that takes around 25 minutes for 5pm Monday evening… no problem! He would be in and out and home for bed (yea!). You can imagine that when we checked in and we heard that he actually might be going in early for the procedure was even better news (yea!). But as we got closer to go time, and Carter got hungrier and hungrier…. we waited our time passed….we waited our time passed… We soon learned that with all after hours emergency procedures things can happen…bad things!  We learned that around 6:30p that due to unforeseen emergency traumas that included a little boy who had been impaled on a stick and another that was burned on more than 95% of this body that Carter’s procedure was now not of immediate importance. They subsided Carter’s hunger by a saline and sugar water combo IV….and we waited. We couldn’t help to feel for the other families, the bad news that we had to wait immediately became good news when realizing how fortunate we were on this night. I hope you all will give some of your positive thoughts and well wishes on to these two families as we did last night. So by about 12 am Tuesday morning we were finally out of surgery and due to the late hour they decided to keep Carter overnight to make sure he was doing okay. Which he was…by the time we made it back to the post-op bedside he was already flirting with this two nurses making them laugh out loud and I could of swore he even had one of them blushing with his baby blues. So what a day of ups and downs…. just another roller coaster ride in the day and life of our “little Carter Boo!”

We have been so happy with Carter’s progress as we get closer to the all-so-important “Day 100″. He has managed to fight off any re-occurrence of GVHS and we have successfully reduced his steroid intake to every other day and his steroid creams to just once a day. So far so good, although there are some off days due to his dependency to them, he has really been feeling and looking good.

We also found out some great news this week. Carter had a skeletal survey done by request of his newest doctor addition to Team Carter Boo, Dr. Heare, a top notch Orthopedic Surgeon @ Children’s. Dr. Heare was extremely happy with his results! As many of you know Carter not only suffers from a blood disorder, but he is also been afflicted with a bone disease that might or might not be related to his I-Cell disease. Basically his bones have been very soft and have ossification problems throughout. We were excited yet very tentative to see the results of his survey, as we were worried and cautioned by many that there probably wasn’t going to be much improvement over his previous x-rays done almost 6 months ago. But as we have learned before… Carter has this uncanny ability to drop a big looping curve ball on you that even Matt Holiday would have a hard time hitting. What Deni and I saw for the first time were, well, bones. Bones with density. Bones that looked like bones not spotted moth-eaten outlines of bones, but just bones. Carter was officially given a big gold star for his efforts and then was proceeded to be showered with hugs and kisses from mom, dad, grandma and aunt. When news of the results made its way to our Endocrinologist, Dr. Miniatis, he too was very happy and a little surprised. We can’t wait to hear more about this progress from our Team Carter Boo and as we continue to give Carter Vitamin D supplements daily more blood tests down the road along with further x-rays will help us track his progress in hopes that we don’t have to opt for more experimental forms of treatment for his bone disorders (YEA).

Carter & the Brotherton’s would really like to thank Dalco Heating and AC (www.dalcohvac.com) for their quick and timely turn around of the new Air Hander/AC system they installed to make sure our son has the best quality air possible moving forward. We would also like to thank Grandma Kay and Aunt Susie for providing a very clean and very fun place to stay for the family over the three days it took. They had their house cleaned from top to bottom to bottom to top to ensure Carter had a healthy environment to stay. As we get closer to “Day 100′ we can’t wait to make other trips out south to Grandma’s and aunt Kristi’s house for more fun.

We would also like to wish our wonderful Brother John, 39(4/5) and cousin Reagen, 6 (4/7) a very Happy Birthday!

Destiny caught Carter on tape doing the “Chicken Dance”… very funny it made us all laugh!

Well once again the Brotherton family has to thank all of you out there that have wrote us words of inspiration, hope, love and prayer. Since our story aired on 9News we have been overwhelmed and inspired by your kind words, as a favor we can only do what we have been doing and letting you know how much we are inspired by our little “boo’s” strength to continue to improve and fight. Carter is currently at Day 75 Post Bone Marrow Transplant (PBMT) and he couldn’t have the doctors any happier. He continues to fight off the Graph Vs Host Syndrome (GVHS) that was such a problem earlier and they continue to reduce his steroid intake. So far so good as we have not seen any re occurrence of his rash. This as you can imagine also helps him sleep a little better, although he has his nights (like last night!) he has slowly been able to put together 3-4 hours at a time of sleep (YES!). Anyway…I wanted to share with you some more photos as I will let them speak for them selves as I am exhausted and am going to bed. OH by the way… please feel free to let everyone know or better yet…. let my wonderful wife, Deni, know that her B-day is tomorrow (4/2) She really could use a shout out from all of you that read this!