Archive for the 'Week 1' Category
February 12th, 2008 - Into the Valley
Cameron underwent a general anaesthetic this morning so that the main IV port could be fitted. He was very anxious about the whole thing, but handled it really, really well. It is essentially a medication delivery tube that is fed into a blood vessel near the collar bone (jugular I suspect) and down into one of the ventricles of the heart. Read the rest of this entry »
February 11th, 2008 - Week 1 Drawing to a close
There are two seemingly insignificant, but incredibly awesome events that have occured very recently. Of course, there are others that are equally relevant, but didn’t happen so recently, so I won’t go into those right now, but I’d like to very briefly share with you, the incidents that happened just in the past week or so, as they are really helping me to bring some perspective to the current situation. Read the rest of this entry »
February 11th, 2008 - Sunday Observations
Today was another relatively uneventful but emotional day. Leigh’s Mom, Ingrid has arrived from Sydney and begun to wave her quiet magic over all of the boys as only a loving grand-parent is capable of. With everything that is going on Ingrid is most certainly heaven sent as Leigh is now camping next to Cameron’s bed and Owen has flu, which means he is disqualified from visiting Cameron. A shadow of concern has certainly moved over Carlton who is not quite himself. He is thinking deeply about all of this and not really letting on just how much he is actually turning over the scenarios surrounding Cameron in his mind. They are both missing their big bro around the house. Read the rest of this entry »
February 10th, 2008 - Coming to Terms
Cam is doing great. The primary treatment (chemo) hasn’t yet begun. He is on what seems like handfuls of tablets and various other medications as well as being permanently attached to a drip that is constantly flushing his system. Yesterday he had a ct scan and because he had one previously – before being admitted – the radiologist assumed he was aware of the side-effects of the contrast material that is injected into his system via his drip, immediately prior to the scan. Read the rest of this entry »
February 8th, 2008 - The Diagnosis
Today Cam has been moved from ICU to the kids? cancer ward in the RB Children?s Hospital. The swelling on his neck and chest is still causing some concern, as he is unable to lie down flat on his back without experiencing difficulty breathing, which also meant that he was denied a general anesthetic for his biopsy and marrow extraction, but he is so incredibly brave and strong. He is such a good kid and was in such good spirits for most of today. He looks so well that the oncologist jokes that he looks like a fraud. Unfortunately however, according to her all of the evidence suggests that if he had been left undiagnosed for another 3-4 weeks, we would almost certainly have lost him. Read the rest of this entry »
February 8th, 2008 - The Bombshell: “you’ve got cancer”
I just returned home a few minutes ago, while Leigh remains at RB Children’s Hospital with Cameron. It is hard to imagine what life could possibly produce next. Cameron has been diagnosed with Lymphoma. To say that this has come as a shock would be an understatement. Since early December 2007 he has been suffering from a slight cough that never quite went away and then turned into a croup type thing, which many school kids seemed to have had around this time, when he was also suffering from terrible hay-fever type allergies, all of which appears to have masked the underlying condition. During that period he was given antibiotics by the GP, who also suspected more recently, that perhaps he had asthma. Generally though, he had not been particularly ‘unwell’. Read the rest of this entry »
