Des Plaines boy home for Thanksgiving after transplant

Exactly one month after Teddy Christiansen was admitted to a Minnesota hospital for a bone-marrow transplant, the 3-year-old is scheduled to be home today celebrating Thanksgiving with his parents and siblings.

Home right now is temporary - a one-bedroom apartment near the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital in Minneapolis where Teddy's transplant was successfully completed on Nov. 6.

Teddy's older sister Raelyn and two younger siblings have been awaiting his arrival.

"I'm sure he will go completely nuts when he sees them," Teddy's mother Jenny Christiansen said Wednesday. "He hasn't been able to crawl around the whole time he's been here. To have the freedom to move around, play and jump around - that is the best gift we could ask for."

The surviving half of prematurely born twins, Teddy was diagnosed last spring with a rare genetic disorder - dyskeratosis congenita - causing bone marrow failure, or the inability of marrow to produce enough blood cells. His rare variant of the disorder, known as Hoyeraal-Hreidarsson syndrome, could lead to leukemia or solid organ cancer.

Teddy's nine-minute transplant involved stripping his body of his own bone marrow and dripping stem cells extracted from an anonymous bone-marrow donor into his body.

His white blood cell count is up to 2,200, and neutrophils, also a type of white blood cell the body makes to help fight infections, is up to 2,000. The optimum white blood cell count is between 5,500 and 15,500, said Christiansen, a Maine West High School graduate formerly of Des Plaines.

"He has had very limited complications," Christiansen said. "He has been fever free. He is currently not showing any signs of rejection although that is something that could begin to show at any time. It's very common for children that have gone through transplants to be readmitted, but our hope is he won't have to be."

It will be a couple of months before Teddy fully recovers from the transplant and returns to his parents' Union home.

"That's the typical timeline when they see complications arise so they don't want us to be far from the clinic," Christiansen said. "Of course, we're overjoyed and extremely thankful that we will all be able to be together for Thanksgiving."

But the family is forgoing the traditional Thanksgiving Day turkey dinner for Teddy's favorite meal.

"We're going to order pizza," Christiansen said.