Radiosurgery

Rosie had another MRI scan last Friday. Peter, Wilma, and Rosie visited the Peter Mac hospital today to find out how she is going.

The doctors are satisifed that the swelling in her brain is significantly reduced and that it is now appropriate to perform the radiosurgery that is necessary in an attempt to destroy the AVM.

Because of the complexity of the technologies involved, it will take about a month to get this surgery organised. The linear accelerator is only available for radiosurgery on Thursdays, as it is configured during the rest of the week for the more familiar and straightforward radiotherapy.

Adults usually experience radiosurgery whilst awake. However the procedure does involve up to two hours of lying completely still, fastened to the operating table either via an elaborate frame clamped between your teeth or bolted into your head. The goal is to achieve a tolerance of 1 millimetre in the targeting of the rays.

Children are often spared this ordeal by general anaesthetic, but the anaesthetic has to be maintained for at least six hours as the scientists and doctors calibrate their instruments and run their computer programmes.

The Peter Mac hospital performs this procedure about 10 to 15 times a year although only once or twice a year under anaesthetic.

So it seems that Rosie will have the treatment in early or mid June. Since it will cause some swelling at first, she may have some symptoms back and may require steroids again but we won't know that until it's done. The gradual destruction of the AVM and aneurysm will then happen over the next couple of years.


In a role reversal last week, Sophie took to bed with a rather nasty bug involving throwing up, diarhoea and fever followed by being completely covered with hives so was off school for almost a week. Rosie and Joey bought her a get well card on the way home from school one day and visited the sickie who was very pleased with the attention.

The cats have come to an arrangement whereby two of them, Pooky and Tiny, are largely upstairs dwellers with an independent food supply in the girls' quarters and Fred and Barney are downstairs dwellers (so they don't have the opportunity to mess up too much carpet). This means that Pooky and Tiny can relax knowing they don't have to walk the plank past those fearsome dogs to get to their food. The exception is good old Chelsea who stood her ground when the puppies arrived and has sussed out they are just noisy windbags who are no threat to her. She barely bats an eyelid anymore around them and they cohabit quite happily.

Sophie is now back in fighting form.