Mother's Day

On Wednesday night Rosie had her latest MRI and Wirginia rang me on Friday morning to report. This one looked better than the last one with the swelling responding to Rosie restarting the Dexamethasone. This was good in itself but also reassuring in that it confirmed for Wirginia her earlier opinion that the swelling was the result of vascular changes (changes in blood flow routes) caused by the shrinking of Rosie's AVM rather than any lasting damage caused by the radiation itself. We are to reduce Rosie's dexamethasone dose to 1mg twice daily which she thinks will be a reasonable maintenance dose for the next 6 months. At that point (approximately) she thinks the changes should have stabilised enough for Rosie to come off the steroid. It's all trial and error so we'll just wait and see. She will order another MRI in a month to check that the maintenance doseage is right. Meanwhile the amount of swelling in Rosie's brain means that there is more pressure in there than in a normal brain so if she suffers a trauma like a big dong on the head or a bad fall etc she is at more risk of injury than the normal person. For this reason Wirginia advised against Rosie going to school camp this week in Philip Island. The location means that she would be 2 hours from hospital in Melbourne in the unlikely event of an injury which is too far for Wirginia's comfort and therefore ours. I broke the news to Rosie after school on Friday and after a brief moment of almost showing how upset she was, she regained her equilibrium and understood the argument that in the big scheme of things her safety now and the rest of her life in good health is more important than the pleasure of going to camp now and risking a catastrophe with long-term consequences.

So having accepted her fate it was back to life as normal with swimming on Friday and tennis on Saturday. Rosie has just figured out that she doesn't have to put up with having a pathetic forehand anymore. She came up with a pretty successful two-handed forehand at the last lesson. Paul was impressed. (By the way, we apologise for the poor picture quality this time. After downloading this lot from the camera, Peter noticed that somebody had put a big pawprint all over the lens so they are somewhat fuzzy. I picked some of the clearer ones and we hope to improve our act next time.)

Saturday was also eventful because Rosie sat the scholarship exam for MLC (Methodist Ladies' College) in the morning. This was a fully-fledged 3-hour affair but with a short break in the middle. We did a practise run with a sample paper at home the week before and it's a very rigorous test. There are 2 stories/essays to write, about 40 multiple choice comprehension questions on 8 different topics including poetry, prose, map-reading, you name it and somewhere in the middle, 40 minutes of maths problem-solving of about 28 questions. I found some of the maths and some of the comprehension pretty tough. The paper is obviously set to be very challenging and only possible to be finished by a tiny handful of genii so that they get a good spread of results. Several of the independent schools use the results of this same exam run by a national organisation to award their scholarships. After her tough year of not much reading, I thought Rosie was very game to still want to sit the exam but she was positively brimming over with chatty details of the day afterwards so it was obviously an exciting and positive experience for her. Good on you, Rosie!

That night I had an MSO contemporary music concert conducted by Hamish McKeich (sp?), formerly contrabassoonist with the NZSO. His Mum, Aroya, came over from Christchurch for the event and chatted with the other Kiwis there inluding our Associate Principal Oboe, Vicki Philipson and our Artistic Administrator, Simon Rogers, also a Christchurch lad. It happened to be Hamish's birthday and Rowan Prior, cellist of Felix the Quartet and mother of Hamish's daughter, Freya (3 months), sent him a nice box of flowers to his dressing room at the theatre which Hamish entrusted to his good friend, Paul Doornbusc who put Hamish up for a couple of nights and looked after him as far as eating and drinking went for the whole time. Paul is a Melbourne composer we've come to know quite well through the Hamish connection. He occasionally drops in with his very well behaved little pooch and tries to civilise Barney and Fred without much success.

Mothers' Day began mercifully late and the girls presented some beautiful handmade cards and lovely gifts. We were invited to Will's new place for pancakes so off we went late morning. Will shares a nice 2-bedroom apartment in South Melbourne with his girfriend, Amy, and another couple who have been friends of theirs for quite a while. He had bought a car-racing set for $10 at the local 2nd-hand shop and that was endlessly entertaining. The pancakes were good too. We haven't yet checked out his new restuarant/nightclub in Chapel St, Sth Yarra but maybe we'll make a point of it when Al and Jane are here.