January 8, 2011: New year... same old story.

We had really hoped that the year of 2010 it would take all its heartache with it. Sadly we have to admit that 2011 has brought its own grief.

Up until yesterday we have had a wonderful time at home, it has been a little hard to adjust, but everything has been so good overall. The girls are both thriving being home together, Charlotte has improved greatly and Yolanda is enjoying her little shadow. We started to renovate our basement. (Our basement flooded three times this year while we were away and it was finally time to deal with it!) Charlotte started physio and occupational therapies. Rob was getting some jobs lined up, getting quotes together and stuff.

This morning I lifted Charlotte out of her crib as usual and plunked her on the floor. She landed funny and crumpled into a heap. I thought that was odd but maybe she had stepped on a toy or something. So I picked her back up and set her on her feet... she took one step, her right leg went all wobbly and she fell again. And I knew what that meant. Rob and I watched her every move during breakfast, her right hand had slightly less function, her leg was doing exactly what it had back in April.

After talking to the oncologist at the Children’s Hospital we went up to emerg here in Cranbrook. Our nurses and everyone there were great, and a CT scan was done right away. It seemed like the doctor had hesitated to tell us anything, until they had talked to our oncologist up in Calgary... I’m guessing that her brain is such a muddle from surgeries that they didn’t want to make a wrong call on anything. As far as we can tell from the CT there is something regrowing in the same area as October’s surgery. It looked about the same size, hard to tell from these scans exactly.

So it’s back up to Calgary for us. A meeting with our doctors Monday and an MRI is planned for Tuesday; it was good that our oncologist was the one who was on call this weekend- plans are already being put into motion that would have otherwise waited until Monday.

And now I must go pack...