Thank you

Today was the long-awaited first visit to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre where radiation experts abound. Sophie went to school with Greer and her Dad while Peter, Wilma and Rosie headed down the road for a nine o'clock appointment at the Outpatient Clinic. After many games of cards and a photo opportunity with some truly impressive teddies (thank goodness they weren't for sale!) the three were ushered in to meet with Dr Greg Wheeler, one of the radiation oncologists who seems to have a coordinating role around the place. He was the one who had seen Rosie and Wilma briefly while they were still inpatients at Children's Hospital. He told us that he had just been over Rosie's scans with Dr Gail Ryan, who is a radiation oncologist specialising in the "stereotactic" radiation which Rosie will have. They observed that the latest MRI shows there is dramatically less swelling since the ones done in hospital but that there is still some there which we had observed ourselves when Wirginia showed us the scans last week. The radiation oncologists want to wait till the swelling has completely gone and think that a reasonable time to check up on it again might be in six weeks. Greg explained that the treatment itself would cause some swelling in the short-term and if it were done on top of some already existing swelling it would set Rosie back in terms of nasty symptoms which she and we wouldn't want. If the only swelling is that caused by the treatment she presumably would be OK as she is at the moment with some swelling still there. If they were dealing with a cancerous tumour they would want to start treatment yesterday but with an AVM like Rosie's there is no pressing urgency. In fact, since the risk of something untoward happening is slightly higher for a year after treatment than before, they want to make sure that they treat at the optimum time. Another MRI in six weeks will show whether the swelling has abated sufficiently and if it has she would then probably be booked in for treatment sometime within the following month. He mentioned a recent case of a boy with a similar problem who was treated after about a year so we will stop holding our breath and just try to get on with life as normally as possible. Of course if anything changes meanwhile or symptoms recur Rosie will be at Children's Hospital within minutes! Greg described the treatment to Rosie and it seems likely that they will be able to do a version which requires building some kind of mouthguard contraption to hold things in place and that she will maybe be a little uncomfortable with the thing in her mouth but that she would be able to be awake ie no general anaesthetic (the procedure itself is only about half an hour after all the planning and building etc) and he assured her it wouldn't hurt which comforted her greatly.

Rosie then went to school with a camera which Wilma had lent for the day to take pictures of the mosaic work in progress. She forgot to take any but Greer took lots of Rosie using her new phone.After school Rosie requested pies and a chocolate croissant, a sort of surrogate dinner before piano at 6:30. Sophie and Flossy were a vision in pink tonight and Rosie's scarf is coming along nicely.

Since we are now adjusting to our new expanded time frame, we will also adjust our input to the website. We are all enjoying making and having this record of a special time in our family and really appreciate the tremendous support of all our family and friends but it will probably help to get life rolling along if we change from a daily diary to something like a weekly one now. Perhaps Thursday or Friday would be good days to catch up on the week since Thursday seems to be when stuff happens at Peter Mac. Our next appointment will be on a Thursday and treatment also seems to happen on Thursdays. Of course if anything particularly exciting happens we will probably not be able to resist the urge to hop back in for a quick update! So thank you, thank you, thank you from us to all of you.