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Updated  22 August, 2002.   

Happy Birthday Megan!

Megan turns 1 today, an incredible milestone in her life considering some 8 months ago many people believed she would never see her 1st birthday.

Like they say - no news is good news. 

Our last visit to the neurologist was a good one.  Megan's last EEG, after trialling high dose Vitamin B6, appeared to improve enough to continue the B6 treatment, and not to have to go the steroid route.  We are finding since Megan has begun taking B6 that her general wellbeing has improved enormously.  She is much more active and she is more alert and chatty.  We do not have to see the neurologist again until the end of January.

We visited Wirginia (neurosurgeon) on Wednesday this week, as our monthly visit to the Maternal Child Health Nurse showed no head growth once again.  Wirginia also found no growth and so Megan will have her shunts 'clamped' in early January.  This means that they will make 2 small incisions in the back of her head to clamp off the drainage tubing of her shunts - a relatively minor operation, particularly in comparison to what she has been through already!  It should be a short stay in hospital, usually no more than 3 days, but then when we first went to RCH for her first round of chemo, it was supposed to be a 4-5 day stay which turned into a 6 week stay!  Wirginia suspects that Megan does not require the shunts, as she has had her tumour removed, which caused the original hydrocephalus.  There are no guarantees however, and it will be a waiting process to see what happens post surgery.  If Megan gets sick, this would indicate that she still does require the shunts.  This 'waiting' can take from days to weeks before it becomes evident one way or the other.  If all goes well, her shunt 'hardware' will be totally removed at a later date.  Her next MRI is still scheduled for February 4, 2002.  This will be a little over one year since diagnosis.  It is hard to believe it is already a year later.  In just 5 days Megan will turn one.  Many people never thought she would live to see her first birthday.  Just look at her now!

Friday we visited the ophthalmologist.  I always enjoy going to see her because she always says such positive things.  If you recall our last visit, she said Megan was definitely NOT blind and that there was significant improvement in her vision.  This time she is "exceeding happy" with Megan's progress, and she is doing much better than she expected.  Megan still continues to have left field vision, but she is beginning to turn her head to utilise this visual field more effectively.  It is always nice to hear that things are going well.  Megan has also had a hearing test since the last update and it continues to show "normal" hearing.  I love being NORMAL! :)

Megan has 4 teeth now, is growing beautifully (as you can see from her pictures!) and developmentally, although the process is slow, we are definitely getting there.  She has begun a new therapy treatment, called Point Percussion Therapy [http://homepages.tig.com.au/~myppt/] which I believed has helped her a lot.  Although she still does not sit unassisted, her trunk control has improved dramatically.  We will get there!