Saturday 13 August 2011

Blog: August 2011

25th August 2011

Wow, what a week!! Rafael started having fevers and a bad cough last week on Tuesday. Dom took him to the Dr and he said an ear & chest infection. At the same time, they took a blood sample.

During the week, his cough persisted, as did the fevers, but he was able to go to school. 

The school called to warn us that some children had been diagnosed with chickenpox! Rafael had already been playing with those boys outside of school anyway.

On Sunday, when he was in the shower, I noticed a bright red clump of pussy sores on his left hop :-( My 1st thought was "chickenpox"!!

We debated calling the hospital, then deiced to wait to see our GP on Monday.

Yep, chickenpox :-( Thankfully it was a localised, mild case :-))))

He stayed home form school for 3 days this week, waiting for the spots to clear, but he has been fine - happy, running around, no fevers :-)

However, his blood tests from last week showed his counts had gone berserk!!! 

We managed to get in touch with Dr Peter and he assures us that it's because of the chickenpox ;-) We will repeat the bloods again in a few weeks when he is fully recovered 

xxx

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Wow! Half way though August already! Better update ;-)

I had a really good time at the conference. Such a llloooonnnnggggg way to go though :-( The conference was much smaller this year as they did not have any travel funding available, so lot's of families didn't go :-(

Most of my good NB friends were there and we had a great time catching up. The doctors that spoke were all very interesting, but they didn't mention anything that really "blew" me away :-( The only new trials are vaccines and immunotherapies.

One Dr spoke about personalised medicine, which I thought sounded really promising, except when he finished, 2 other Dr's got up and started asking lot's of tricky questions, basically attacking him!!

The long term survivor, Sebastian Gillen got up to speak this year and he is amazing!! He made us all cry :(

http://www.youtube.com/user/humoreffect#p/a/u/0/JMPgEU019tk

There are 4 clips, watch in order - I used to hate needles, Sleep doesn't come easy in the hospital, Sometimes you've just gotta help yourself and I never thought you'd get here

While I was away, Rafael lost his top front tooth and then in the same week he lost the 2nd one!! Busy week for the tooth fairy ;-)

Since I arrived home, I've just been busy with school drop off and pick up (can't wait 'till they both move to the other campus!), homework, housework .... blah, blah.

I wrote to Dr Peter and he replied and even cc'd his nurse to make some bookings for Rafa. Still no word from RCH! Prof Hicks said he can scan in October, so that is the only plan we have so far, yet we don't even have a date for that ;-)

Rafael and Lela had their school Book Character Parade last week. Rafael was Mr Small and Gabriela was Ginny Weasley - they both had a great day. I'll post some photos later :-)

It's that time of year again - Aussie Pie Night!!! Challenge have helped our family (especially G & R) in so many ways! 

xxxx