People are Wonderful

Hello All

Today I want to thank all those who walked on behalf of Oliver last night in the Light the Night Walk for the Leukemia Foundation. I would have loved to have been there and I know if I had I would have been blown away. Thank you too to all the sponsors of those who walked. My Dad dropped in after the event which was lovely, to give us a balloon with a little light inside and the t-shirt he wore for Simon. After he left I had a little tear as I do now as I consider all those who are caring for us and all that that means for us.

To give you an update on where we are at, I now know the meaning of two commonly used phrases. 'Screaming blue murder' & I have forgotten the other one, needless to say this is Oliver on steroids. I know plenty of you who have seen our little cherub will not believe me, so perhaps I will endeavour to get video footage of this event as proof of his steroid induced disposition. This screaming comes when simply changing his nappy before a feed as experienced this evening and in order for him to stop whilst in his highchair eating, I shove the food in every time he opens his mouth, I laugh now but I tell you, keeping my patience and reminding myself that this is not my child but a monster posing as Oliver is tough at the time.

We are still getting smiles, very little laughter, he is more clingy and is currently doing a lot of nose scrunching, this I dont think is due to steroids, but he has taken after me, if any of you have noticed, I scrunch my nose when I laugh and apparently tended to do this as a kid too. At first it was when he smiled, now it is almost all the time. So often lately I wonder what my little lad is thinking.

Well tomorrow we look forward to a family day, Simon has the day off and we dont need to go into the hospital - thank God (literally)! Our hospital day has now changed from Tuesday to Wednesday as now that Oliver is weller and doesnt need to be seen twice a week, all the lymphoma patients are seen on a Wednesday. This is good for me as my mothers group is on a Tuesday so I can endeavour to get back there with Oliver from time to time, but for Simon this is a pain as he had changed all of his clients around to have Tuesdays and Fridays off. Wednesdays is also one of Simons busiest days. We are fortunate though as his clients are very understanding and accomodating. So the plan is for Simon to go back to working Fridays and just have Wednesdays off.

So we were at the hospital on Tuesday which was Olivers first day of Cycle 2, which is big chemo day, but we got home at 5:30 which was earlier than we expected. Oliver had his echocardiogram and Simon sat by his side and I sat on the chair watching my little babies heart on the screen and shed a tear (glad the room was dark) and thought of how I couldnt possibly handle anymore bad news. Cancer is one thing, but then the side effects of the chemo are something else, sometimes I catch myself panicking about what those might be for Oliver and then I realise that all I can do is pray that they will be minimal if any. However his next lot of chemo went ahead so the echocardiogram must have been ok.

I have had a few tears over the last week, another time was when Simon and I were on our own at a lovely organic cafe in Freo on Saturday having a cuppa in between our good friends Aaron & Narelle's wedding and reception and looking at photos on my mobile phone. Photos of Oliver in the hospital when he was born and thinking how did we go from this gorgeous, vulnerable little cutie to having a little boy with cancer.

A big thank you to Mum & Dad for babysitting Oliver on Saturday, we had 10 hours off, thats right 10 hours, where we thoroughly enjoyed watching our friends get married, then sitting upstairs at this cafe outside on the balcony looking down on the streets of Freo and then partying on at the reception.

Thank God for good friends! Aaron and Narelle have been great and it was so good to see them enjoying their big day and the absolute adoration they have for each other. I too was lucky to receive Narelle's bouquet and no I didnt elbow all the other girls aside to catch it, Narelle gave it to me - so it looks like Simon and I will have to get married all over again - yippee! On the subject of marriage, we are coming up for 10 years this December - I know, whoa and a friend of mine sent me a text saying that aluminium and tin are whats given to celebrate 10 years of marriage so I guess I am looking at getting a shed all for myself.

Lots of Love to you all

Karls