Dates like these are and will be embedded in our minds forever, they never leave they just hang around; mind you some of these dates are ones to be celebrated then others are far from that. This date in particular was a bittersweet date for us, Nathan didn’t have a full match donor and as a last resort Dad had to step in as a partial match, a HAPLO transplant they call it, a risky transplant with a 50/50 chance; we knew that but options were not there for our son, this was ultimately his best chance for survival and beating this 2nd cancer. Nathan did great with the transplant and it was a huge success with 100% donor engraftment and although we knew it would be a long road I can honestly tell you no one expected to be facing this day without our amazing, beautiful, and brave son.

Sadly the cancer was too aggressive and came back with a vengeance, this mind you after the Dr.s set off “a nuclear bomb” inside our son. When your fighting a beast like this you give it everything you possibly can and push forward fighting everyday, hour, minute, and second; and that what each and every one of us did including his treating Drs.

Today I set aside time to be very thankful we had the opportunity we had to give this possibility to Nathan, a second chance at life or maybe a 3rd, or 4th; honestly he’d been through so much but something Nathan did through it all that we fall back on all the time is and this with knowing he was fighting for his life, to survive time and time again over and over was he lived. Nathan took every opportunity to “LIVE” to succeed, learn, and move forward from helping others to doing things Nathan wanted to do, hiking, sports, laughing, pranking, and learning; he loved to learn. So this day I will look back with excitement, that we had the opportunity but also sorrow because he’s not here to celebrate his day, his 2nd birthday’s anniversary… I always wanted an April baby and I got one even if it was for a short time… I got one <3 YOU!!!  #forever16 #foreverwithus