Hi my name is Logan. I am 13 years old and I have a liver and kidney disease. My family and I participated in the healing retreat last year.
At first, I worried about what people were going to think about me and if I was going to make friends, but from the very beginning we all connected. It felt like being with family. I liked being in a place where I could be myself. I really liked meeting people that didn’t judge me when I said I couldn’t do something because of my disease or that I was just too tired. I also like being able to be myself and not have to worry about what other people thought because the other families we were with have gone through a lot of the same scary stuff me and my family have gone through.
I had a lot of fun at the retreat and learned so much from all the treatments. This experience has helped me a lot. At the retreat I learned that there are other ways to deal with my pain than just medicine and doctors and surgery.
Because of my disease I have had to spend a lot of time in the hospital. This is stressful and scary for me and my family. I was just in the hospital a few weeks ago. I had to stay there for 3 weeks. I had to take a lot of morphine for my pain.
Shay and others from the retreat came to visit me every day to massage me and to be with my family. Morphine makes me feel very itchy and the massages help me so much. Eric came and did Reiki on me and Allen also came to play the didgeridoo for me. This helps me so much. I wish other kids can get this too.
My mom and I have been a part of the events committee because we want to help make the retreat possible for other kids and their families because we got so much out of it.
I have said from day one of the retreat that I wish all the families could live together at the retreat and the parents would go to work while we went to school. Then in the evening and weekends we could do all the retreat things and have meals together.
Thank you Shay for letting us enjoy this amazing journey. I promise to continue to help you make this possible for other kids and their families.
