Isla had an EUA at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital on Tuesday the 28th of April. Garreth took Isla to this appointment as I had an obstetrician appointment, which was not easy to reschedule. Isla had to fast from 7am for an 11am admission. This was going to be similar to her MRI the previous week, where we were admitted via the ward, however elective surgery had just started again this week, so admission was carried out through day surgery. This just meant Garreth and Isla had to wait in a big waiting room with several other people (only 6 groups), and therefore had to keep Isla contained to their chairs so the kids weren’t mingling too much.
Isla was originally first on the list and was supposed to go through to theatre around 1pm. However, the list was changed and we didn’t know when she would be going in. It turned out Isla had become last on the list and didn’t go into theatre until about 3.30pm.
Waiting for theatre
Isla fell asleep in Garreth’s arms while waiting and the anaesthetist managed to put her to ‘sleep’ with the gas without even waking her – if that makes sense...
Isla was finished just before 4.30pm. The ophthalmologist came to speak to Garreth and introduce herself. She confirmed that she thought everything looked stable and she couldn’t see any new tumours. She mentioned the camera they use is a little different to the one in Melbourne, but from what she could see, Isla’s main tumour also looks stable. She confirmed that the pictures would be sent to Melbourne for them to review.
After Garreth had called me to let me know what was happening I sent Sandra a quick text to let her know Isla’s EUA was done and the Dr thought everything looked stable and the images should be sent to Melbourne soon. Sandra replied a couple of hours later to let me know she had received the images and these would be reviewed by the Melbourne team the following day, and she would call with a plan after that.
It took some time for Isla to get back to Garreth in day surgery, but she was back with him just before 5.30pm. She was happily eating and drinking in recovery before too long and after about 1hr there, they were discharged and free to come home. So I headed in to pick them up at about 6:30pm.
A couple of days later I received a call from Sandra to confirm that both Melbourne doctors had reviewed Isla’s images from the Adelaide EUA and agreed that things were still looking stable. The plan from here was to return to Melbourne in 4 weeks time for her next EUA. Sandra said she would leave it up to us as to how we travelled to Melbourne and we would just have see how things were regarding COVID at the time. She mentioned it is likely that the RCH would still only be allowing 1 parent to accompany children into the hospital, but she was currently fighting for a few of the ‘early stage’ families to allow both parents to attend and she said she would add us to that list also.
© Alison Davey 2021
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