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Good Morning, Everyone!

I am happy to report that the Sweeney family all slept under the same roof last night. It was kind of crazy, but I ended up going and picking Ryan up from U of M yesterday. We are all glad that he is home.

I also want to give you some details regarding Ryan's lung transplant. There are a lot of different things that go into a transplant, so I will do my best to get everything straight. Please feel free to ask questions if you have any.

Regarding the wait time. Jenni said yesterday that she has had patients at the top of the list who has received lungs in as little as 2 days and others who are still waiting after 18 months. She encouraged us to continue living life as normal as possible and try not to put life on "hold". At the same time, she encouraged me to have things lined up for the kids and to have a bag packed for myself with some stuff for Ryan.

Being number 1 could be temporary. Someone could come along and bump Ryan if they are more sick than he is. They would also have to have an "O" blood type and fall in the same body size range. Normally body size is 2" above and below your height (not based on weight). We have discovered that Ryan has extra long lungs, so his size range is actually from 5'8"-6'2". Ryan could also fall out of "first place" by getting healthier. Currently his lung allocation score (LAS) is 42.16. The range is from 0-100. Someone whose LAS is over 40 is considered very sick, but obviously Ryan could be worse.

Ryan could receive lungs from anywhere withing 1500 miles. 80-90% of U of M's lung donors are from the state of Michigan. If lungs became available in MI, they would go to people in Michigan's OPO (I don't know what that stands for) first.

We could receive a call at anytime. Jenni is not allowed to leave messages, but she can tell people on our call list why she is calling. She did tell us that 70% of the calls come during the middle of the night.

For now that is all that I can remember. Please feel free to share this info with anyone who is curious, I know we are being prayed for far beyond this blogs visitors! Again, if anyone has any questions, please let us know. We will answer them if we can.