Gabi woke up vomiting. At first she seemed like she must be okay, but was sick again. Fortunately, Sharon came to the rescue and took Gabi into her care as we had a long day ahead with appointments at the hospital. Our last time there…hopefully.
Just before leaving Dr Harvey dropped over to deliver a much-needed letter to make our trip a smoother one, considering I’ll be carrying a ton of medicines with me. It was strange saying goodbye as Harvey is embarking on a work trip and will get back around the time we depart.
We got to the hospital at 09:00am for Maria’s blood test. That went well. We then went to meet our Neuro-oncologist. The file needed to be located as it had been stored somewhere else after the CT…a sign of things to come.
The meeting with the Neuro-oncologist went reasonably well. As we expected, there were no air pockets seen that may prevent Maria from travelling. She spoke a little about what else could be seen in the scan (although not detailed compared to an MRI) regarding the presence of tumour and edema. I should qualify this by saying that prior to the meeting we knew about “flare effect” that can be seen after radiation treatment, which they expected, but funnily both of us were caught us by surprise and left feeling a little flat.
We were prescribed more drugs, which we purchased to cover us for now, the upcoming trip and until we meet with specialists back home. During this time I got to catch up with my “friends” at Aroma Café. It was funny to say goodbye and also to the pharmacist who I had come to know because of the countless visits.
We had an appointment with the Neurosurgeon at 1:20pm. We waited near his office and as he walked past, he spoke with us and seemed surprised we were meeting. After a number of calls, etc. we ended up heading down to the outpatients’ clinic where we needed to meet with him. We were given a ticket and discovered there were 7 in front of us. Supposedly the average visit is 10mins. We had a meeting with the Radio-oncologist at 2:30pm “sharp’ (as he is flat out) and it approached there was a great deal of stress being felt, especially when I explained we needed to leave but would return, to which one of the young counter staff replied we had better. I kindly shared about our wait and our determination to finalise all appointments today. Unfortunately I could not mimic Arnold Schwarzenegger well enough to say “I’ll be back” in a way that may have broken the tension.
We made our way to the Radio-oncologist’s meeting and got there just before, to find he wasn’t there! By this stage, I kid you not that Maria had walked throughout the day a distance of probably 2km. She was exhausted and we were becoming a little emotional (just quietly between us – nothing dramatic). I had eyed off a wheelchair nearby and decided this was her mode of transport for the rest of the afternoon.
The meeting with the Radio-oncologist went well, except we were a little on edge because he was nearly 30mins late and we were fearful of missing the Neurosurgeon.
We got back to see the Neurosurgeon (wheelchair express at high speed) as he was about to walk out the door to the Operating Room. He wanted to spend more time with us, but was unable. However, we covered off on the things that we needed to and like always, he put us at ease and offered ongoing communication to us and specialists back home.
We said goodbye to our friend Isaac and left the hospital. It was now 7½ hours after arriving. We headed home and I had a short break, before collecting Gabi.
A little while later after making her dinner, I was back out the door to the Medical Centre for a 7:15pm appointment with the ENT to go over Ben’s X-ray results and discuss any possible future treatment Ben may need. When I was handing in some papers to the ladies at the International Department, I mentioned we were leaving and when they discovered why, one of the ladies actually recalled Maria coming in with a severe headache for her CT scan—the evening we ended up at hospital and began this journey.
Ben had a play date with his friend Faisal. He got home around 8:45pm and went straight to bed. I think we’re all running on empty at present!
In addition to trying to shake the remnants of this throat infection, a sore shoulder blade and tooth, I have a couple of other teeth that seem to be playing up. Hypochondria?
