THE Call

It was a dark and stormy night....

No kidding, it really was! But let me start at the beginning.

Chelsea was on a family vacation at Fripp Island, SC.  We all arrived around 4pm on Saturday June 11th.  And the first indication that we were going to have an interesting family reunion came at 7:30pm.  The transplant team had contacted Chelsea's aunt Sherry to find us - there was a possible donor and Chelsea was put on alert.  Since this was the first alert call that we had in over a year, the entire family was on pins and needles until we received notification that the donor was not viable a few hours later.

The vacation continued even though Chelsea was really not feeling great.  She was having some stomach issues and was not able to fully participate in vacation activities.  She did have fun cooking with her uncle Bill and riding around the island on a golf cart.

Now back to the storm! Wednesday evening seemed uneventful, Chelsea went to Karaoke with Kelly, Matt, Daniel, Mae and Eric.   A pretty heavy rain had started and everyone went off to bed by midnight.  A call at 12:30am on June 16th changed all that.  Kim, Chelsea's transplant coordinator, said a very good donor match for Chelsea was found and for us to come right away to Pittsburgh.  This was very different from the previous calls we have had, where we were put on alert for a few hours before being called off.  This call took us to a whole new level - we were going to Pittsburgh!