Thursday, October 27, 2011

phew....all stable

Here we are at the end of October. Another scan behind us. And at the end of the day, I can report that all is essentially stable, nothing to worry about, but it was a tense day...getting to this point.

Gregorio says we should just wait till the follow-up meeting in the oncology clinic next Thursday, but would you be able to wait one week? I  know I am the pestering mother, asking for information until I get it. I cannot live in ignorance. I want to know - good or bad - I want the news now. I am not patient at the best of times. Then we can prepare ourselves for the next step and how we deal with imparting the information to Isabella and Matilde. Isabella's neurologist replied to my email this morning that he was out of town and not back till Monday. In a separate message, the wonderful nurse practitioner explains that there was a lack of neuro specialists to review the scans yesterday, hence the delay. Early afternoon today, she sends us the preliminary report with the words "there is some increase but do not panic yet. I am going down to radiology with Dr X to take a look". Do not panic YET? Yeah.... right.....meanwhile we did the shopping, we bumped into our dear old neighbor, who knows only too well about the journey cancer can take, though I took seeing her to be a good omen....another message comes in from Children's "we are going to review her scans in the next 30 minutes"......an hour passes and in comes the news "there is some slight change but nothing to worry about, we will continue to monitor everything but essentially all still stable". A huge sigh of relief. At this point I do call Gregorio with the news. He said he had lost 4kg! I resorted to eating chocolate. It takes two.

Anyway this aggravating wait and exchange of information only lasted a day  - with all communication done by email, as Isabella was constantly by my side and I did not want to alarm her unnecessarily. However, she gets the joy and relief now. She walks into the dining room ce soir "ah a mojito for mummy and papa' we must be celebrating ME!" A big grin, and rightfully so.

If only we could have asked Siri the answer for Isabella's latest MRI results. Yes I upgraded from the first generation of iPhone to the all new singing and talking 4s. Let me tell you Siri has the answers to most things: the meaning of life (I like her answer about chocolate the best), she looked up the answer to the $64 million on the internet; she can find my husband; apparently if a woodchuck could chuck wood, it would chuck 42! She responds to questions about love - in English and French though she didn't understand my German for the best way to the train station! There was a definite note of sarcasm in her reply to my question about the whereabouts of my phone "who would you like to call, Emma?" Hours of entertainment.

We have had a relaxing half term and now we are gearing up for a pumpkin fest this week-end. Watch out for our devil and witch. No prizes for guessing how we will be dressed. Yeehaw!

The rehearsals for the Nutcracker and the Children's Chorus of Washington are picking up. If you are interested in catching our little performers on stage, let me know and I'll give you the relevant dates.

We'll update you when we have more news.
Lots of love,
Emma and Gregorio. xxxx