Meanwhile

First things first - the MRI consultations. ON Wednesday morning Peter and I took Rosie to Peter Mac where we saw our friend Greg Wheeler and Rosie's latest brain pics. He showed us the areas of swelling which accounted for her right side weakness nd was fairly confident that these were a result of the radiation starting to do what it's supposed to ie reduce the AVM. He and Claire Phillips, the head stereotactitian were also confident that they were not seeing unintended radiation damage to Rosie's brain. We were somewhat reassured but looked forward to having our case manager, neurosurgeon Wirginia Maixner at Children's Hospital, have a look at the scans too. We all rolled up at her office this morning and she had a really good look at all the scans and also compared them with earlier ones from last April and September. As always she answered our questions in a clear way and we were able to get her back to basic English. She is also quite confident that she is seeing a reduced AVM and also reduced aneurysm accompanied by quite a lot of swelling, some of which is encroaching on the area where motor pathways pass hence the right side symptoms. She doesn't think there is radiation damage or necrosis as they charmingly call it. She explained the swelling by relating it to the changes occuring in blood flow. As the AVM reduces and, as it seems, the aneurysm too, blood flow through those bits is reduced and new ways of carrying the blood around are gradually being found. We are reminded of her words early on in the piece last year that gradual change is a very good thing in the brain. Some of the veins that have not been used to as much flow may be responding by swelling a little at first. Wirginia wants another MRI done at Children's late next week to follow the changes closely - also to get clearer pics of some veins by the use of contrast injected into Rosie's arm during the MRI. Peter Mac didn't do that last time for some reason. Wirginia kept the films and will scan them into her system at Children's so she has Rosie's complete record and will also show them to the radiation people at Children's. She will then send them back to Greg Wheeler who also wants to show them to another brain person at Peter Mac so we at least should have no shortage of second, third and fourth opinions. Meanwhile Rosie is on a reasonably high dose of the steroid Dexamethasone till the end of the weekend and then on a reduced dose until we see Wirginia again after the next MRI. This may help to reduce the swelling - it certainly seems to have eliminated her headaches. She has been headache-free for almost a couple of weeks now. So far it hasn't resulted in the craving for sumo-wrestler-sized meals. Rosie is going about life normally and is keeping up piano, tennis (somewhat compromised) and swimming (looked very good in the pool today). Things that are on hold are ballet and Spanish dancing and violin. While her left hand operates normally, her right hand and arm are not quite up to the finesse and control required to manouvre a violin bow. She still manages a modified form of running and looks forward to sport at school. Watch this space.

Meanwhile back on January 7 we had a fabulous day in Rotorua starting with a visit to Whakarewarewa, lunch at a very nice Japanese joint in town and pedal-boating on the lake.

We drove to Murupara in the afternoon to visit Melanie, daughter of our former nanny, Faye, and her two gorgeous children, Angelica and the newish Harrison. Harrison is a most obliging baby and Angelica and Sophie got on like a house on fire.

In the evening we went up on the gondola, down on the luge and up on the chairlift several times and then enjoyed the sumptuous buffet with glorious view over Rotorua and the lake.

The next day we had a lovely visit with Aunty Jane who lives in Matapihi just down the road from Mt Maunganui. She is Dad's sister and Rosalie Jane is named after her. At 89 (hard to believe) she still looks after her lovely home and garden and got some watering help from the team.

Next stop Whitianga!