Posted 8:29 PM by Fagan Family

Thursday, March 27, 2003
It has been a fun week with Karsten. How can life be fun in the hospital? Well, when Karsten feels good his personality is a like a beacon of sunshine to the world. This past week they have been raising the pressure on his external shunt to prepare him for internalizing the shunt by the first of next week. So everyone send positive vibes our way, next week is going to be a big one! So far he is tolerating a little more pressure in his head. I know this shunt thing sounds confusing and it is. Karstens Therapists have been working real hard with getting his strength back. He is now able to sit up on his own and likes to play in his high chair and of course loves his wagon rides. He still is not able to stand and hold his weight up. One of the cemo drugs weakens his joints in his legs. After he is all done with his treatments he will be runing around in no time. This week we have been really working on feeding him through his mouth. It is all pretty foreign to him and he is not to intersted. He is definatley not starving, he looks like a little sumo wrestler. Karten was featured in the Heart Beat ( Sacred Heart Magazine). It was a two page article about the new Oncology department opening in August and how Karsten is there first cemo kid. It had a picture of Karsten with Dr Judy, the Oncologist. It was pretty neat.
Will and I feel real good about the progress that Karsten has made. Our Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways and we have are so grateful for the many miracles that have taken place these past five months. Jacqualine just asked me how Karsten got to be so special and I told her that Heavenly Father made him special, just like he made you special and Kayla special. She wanted to know how come he was on the computer and in a magazine. I told her that Karsten is very sick and people want to know how he is doing so they can pray for him to get better. Thank you for all your prayers. You are all special to us and we are indeed grateful for the many helping hands.

Posted 3:34 PM by Fagan Family

We apologize for the delay in updating his site. Computers and I don't always get along, and mine got the better of me for a few days.

A lot has happened since we last updated. The morning after we last updated you, we had to rush Karsten to the hospital because his shunt had stopped working. We left the girls with the nurse who was here, jumped in the car and took off. Angie made me sit in the back with Karsten just in case he needed help breathing, and she got behind the wheel and took off. That may have been a mistake. Angie turned on the hazard lights and began flashing anyone the wouldn't get out of the way. We got on the freeway and were doing OK until a Washington state patrolman decided that a redhead driving 85 mph in a minivan with her lights flashing and pushing people out of the way was too much to resist. He pulled us over and when we told him what was going on, he offered to call an ambulance for us. We told him we weren't going to wait for an ambulance and he reluctantly told us to go on. He caught up with us about a mile later and provided a nice police escort to the hospital. I thought these things only happened in the movies.

In spite of our experience, Karsten was still in trouble and they took him right into surgery. It turned out that somehow the shunt drain had changed position in the bloodstream. They repositioned the shunt and thought everything would be fine. We were about to go home again two days later when Karsten started having trouble again. Again we went into surgery. They thought that if they repositioned the shunt again that it would start draining. It didn't work. All that day Karsten was in extreme pain because of the pressure in his head. It was so hard to sit at his bedside completely unable to help our son. We were back in surgery that night to externalize the shunt. Even though he began to improve ofter the last surgery, we were devastated because that meant we wouldn't be going home.

Four days later(which was Tuesday, March 11) Karsten was getting chemotherapy again. He has tolerated the chemo well again and we convinced the doctors to let us bring him home for a couple of days. Not too many kids get to go home with an external shunt. We'll go back to the hospital March 17 to let him prepare for surgery to try and intenalize his shunt again. We're praying that this time it will work more permanently. If it does, than our lives can somewhat return to normal as we do chemo on an outpateint basis.

We did receive some encouraging news from th doctors this week. It appears on all the CT scans they've done this week that the tumor is partially calcified. Calcification is a sign that the tumor is being broken down. It was nice to receive some positive news after the discouraging week that we had.

Today is Karsten's first birthday and it feels so good to have him home with us. He has been so happy and so willing to fight and not give up. He is a tremendous example for all of us. As long as he wants to fight, so will we. Our lives have been filled with blessings as we try to learn from Karsten's example

Posted 9:36 PM by Fagan Family

Karsten's home!!!!!!!! We finally got to bring our Superman home March 1. It is such a blessing to have our family all under the same roof again. We were worried that Karsten would be nervous being in a different environment, but he has done very well. His room looks like a mini hospital room with all the equipment and Angie and I are getting even less sleep than before, but it's well worth it. They should give us honorary nursing degrees after this is all over. Of course Jacqualine and Kayla love having their little brother home. We have to fight them off of him sometimes.

We are due back in the hospital for three days of chemo in a week. That's OK, however, because we know that we'll come right back home. We kind of miss some of our friends at the hospital, and we know that the hospital misses Karsten.

We still know that there is a long road ahead, but were digging in for the long haul. As always we appreciate all your prayers and support.

Love to you all.