Rosie's angiogram and Sophie's party

Two important events have dominated recently, Rosie's angiogram and Sophie's delayed (by 3 months!) birthday party.

Firstly, Rosie's angiogram which finally happened on Thursday, June 21st. We'd been bumped by an emergency case the week before and were almost bumped again but when the surgeon heard we were going to Fiji and wouldn't be able to reschedule for a couple of weeks, he called in a favour and kept us on the list. Rosie had to have a general anaesthetic so stopped eating from the night before and we showed up at the Children's Hospital Day Centre at 7 am. The place was like a railway station but luckily we didn't have to wait too long because Rosie was first on the list. After all the paperwork and sitting around, we were taken to meet the anaesthetist at about 8:30 and after more palava the surgeon, Mr Bekhit, came to say hi and deliver the speech including the risks involved which I wasn't sure Rosie needed to hear but I suppose she's at an age where they tend to treat them more as young adults. Rosie changed into her hospital gown and got wheeled into the anaesthetic room at about 9:30. One of the nurses was trying to be helpfully distracting while they put a line into her hand and carried on chatting about school and asking all sorts of questions till finally Rosie said "when am I going to sleep?". They had a laugh and realised she wasn't impressed with the distraction tactic and just wanted to get on with it. I stayed with her till she went under and then waited down the corridor with a few other parents. The procedure took just under an hour during which the surgeon made a tiny hole in her groin and inserted a fine tube into a major artery all the way up to her neck then dye went all over the show in her brain so they could see lovely clear pictures. As soon as he was finished he came to the waiting room and told me everything looked great. There was no trace of the AVM. I asked him what he could see that would explain her disability and he said there were some vessels in the affected area with abnormal flow probably due to radiation damage but that the damage was probably much less than if they had tried to surgically remove the AVM. The important thing, he said, is that she is no longer in any danger or at risk from the AVM itself. After a short while I was allowed to go and see her in recovery where she was pretty tired and disoriented at first. We were taken back to the Day Centre where the long haul began. Mr Bekhit had told Rosie that the hard part would be lying still in bed for 6 hours afterwards to make sure the little wound didn't start to bleed. She had been looking forward to visiting the Starlight Room, a funfilled activity centre for the kids in hospital but it was not to be. She got me to ask the nurses if she could go there in a wheelchair but they were under orders to keep her in bed till 5 pm. Luckily Joey was off school and spent the day at Rosie's bedside playing games with her. I went and picked Sophie up early too so she could hang out there for a few hours. At about 4 pm Mr Bekhit came and checked her out, was pleased and confirmed we could go home at 5. He kindly posed for a bedside photo. On our way out Rosie got her reward which was a visit to the hospital gift shop where she picked up a few things for herself including a huge cow balloon and presents for Joey, Sophie and Greer who was going to visit when we got home. Altogether a very successful day and a good one to have behind us.

Two days later (it hadn't been planned to be this close to Rosie's angiogram) Sophie finally got to have a birthday party. We had an old-fashioned one at home with games which was great fun. A few selected guests slept over. The usual party games eg the chocolate game, the pingpong ball blowing game, pass the parcel, musical pillows (music provided by Joey with stopping blasts by Rosie), etc got everybody worked up but my favourite was the mummy game where 4 teams of girls had to choose one of their team to be the mummy then the others had to make the mummy with 6 rolls of toilet paper. We were knee deep in toilet paper at the end of it. Sophie had clamoured for a Trampoline cake which initially had Rosie quite peeved because she wanted to be the only one who had that idea but in the end I persuaded her she couldn't have a monopoly on Trampoline cakes forever. Much later the sleepover girls had pizza for dinner and made glowstick jewellery. It all went swimmingly and the last girls were dispatched at about 11:30 this morning. Now we have the holidays, Jessye's return and Fiji to look forward to.