Allow me to introduce myself - I am Jim McClelland.  In the post below, which is extremely long, you will come to know me as the guy my son Loren likes to complain about. 

Loren is my now almost 9-year-old son.  If you want to learn more about him, you can go to www.crystalisland.com.  This is an outdated website that I used to keep people posted on his progress during his two bone marrow transplants.  Loren has a disease called Hurler Syndrome.  He likes to spell it Sindrome because it is a sin anybody, but especially a child less than a year old, should be faced with a disease that will kill him in 5 to 10 years. 

Such was the case with Loren.  He underwent one transplant in August of 1999 and by October of that year, the transplant was a failure.  He underwent a second transplant in January 2000.  By September 2000, it looked like he had lost that transplant also.  We were resigned to his death before he turned 10 year-old.  That's pretty much what we expected until June 2001 when his transplant went from a dismal failure to a resounding success.  I will tell you about that as I build this blog.

Early on in my journalizing, I began to write from what I perceived would be Loren's one year-old viewpoint.  That is the reason you will find massive misspellings and other gramatical errors in most of the posts until I finally get caught up to 2007.  I will try to get there as soon as possible.  I will also, finally, see if I can get Loren to say a few words instead of using my own and pretending I am him.

After Loren's first transplant, I compiled the journals to that point and published a book called Cookin' At Cook: A Babe in Transplantland.  In retrospect, I am sorry I called it that, but that's the name and I am sticking with the title now.  If you go to Loren's Place bookstore, you will find a link to several major book sellers. I would appreciate it if you clicked on one of those links (Amazon is a good one) and buy the book. 

I won't lie to you.  I want the book to sell because I need the income.  It's not that I do badly in my chosen profession as a certified public accountant, but the expenses of taking care of three kids, one of whom has a terminal disease and requires a lot of physical, speech and occupational therapy are daunting.  Thank God for family.

I also plan to give at least 10% of what I make to the National MPS Society , the organization that advocates for kids like Loren and a few other organizations that have blessed Loren and my family greatly.  The money for the MPS Society will probably be earmarked for family support.  I don't know how much you, the reader know about terminal diseases, but they don't just affect the patient.  They affect everyone in the family.  Last night, my 17 year-old son remarked that he went without a mother for several years so his baby brother would live.  That happened because the transplant was in Fort Worth, Texas; three hours away from our home and we were lucky it was so close.

The point is that such diseases take a tremendous toll on everyone in the immediate and extended family.  I am convinced that Loren's disease was the catalyst for my own mother succumbing to psychosomatic illnesses that eventually led to real illness that she couldn't handle, so she killed herself.  The stresses can be that bad and anything I can do to support other people in their fight to keep their child or children alive, is something I want to do.

I guess that leads me to the final reason for this blog.  It's time I got back into the business of writing down my experiences so others might benefit from my family's experience.  As we say in AA, we need to share our experience, strength and hope in order to help others escape from a living hell and to keep ourselves from falling back into it.

So, there you have it.  This will be a selfish page where I shamelessly try to get people to buy my first book so the publisher will want to publish the second book.  It will also be an altruistic page that I hope brings help and healing to all who read it.

By the way, with the success of his second transplant, Loren's disease is in check and he is doing well.  Although I expect a long life for him, others feel he won't live much past his 21st birthday.  Most of the time I live in a fantasy world, but a long life for my little pal is one fantasy I hope to see become reality.

Finally, Loren will now be taking back over this journal.  Although he is now in third grade, he still has difficulty expressing himself and, while he will spell better than eight years ago, he still has his own unique and inspired viewpoint on life.  He is a special kid, and so are his brother and sister.