Thursday, March 17, 2005

Checkup

On Thursday morning, Peter, Wilma, and Rosie went to see Wirginia Maixner. Wirginia was able to bring up on her computer screen the MRI scans taken of Rosie's brain yesterday and compare them with the old ones. She observed that the swelling of the aneurysm had been reduced by the steroid treatment, as had been hoped and that the clotting in the aneurysm which had caused the surrounding swelling in the first place had calmed down and become an old clot, showing up as a different shade on the picture. She was helpful with her explanations and happily agreed to be snapped for the website. We are to visit two radiation oncologists next Wednesday at Peter Mac to understand the next steps.

It is not clear whether Rosie's vision will come back to normal, it will take six months to a year to find this out. It depends on whether the loss was caused by pressure from the swelling (good) in which case she will recover as the pressure is reduced or because the blood flow was favouring the AVM over the optic pathways, starving them (bad) in which case she'd stay the same. Since the other side of the brain looks after the left field of vision, the worst case scenario is the current situation ie she's not going to lose more and we'll keep our fingers crossed for the first scenario. However, the important thing is that she is still able to handle two hot chocolates at once.

After school Rosie used her new cell phone to call Yoriyori and order some sushi for tea.

Late in the afternoon Wilma went to Lauriston School to catch up with Jessye playing tennis.