More good news

Malcolm had his one month post-treatment checkup at the hem/onc clinic today. Of course it has not been one month since he finished treatment but we had it a bit early since we are leaving Sunday for Ontario. He will have another checkup the week after we arrive home. All of his bloodwork was good today - hemoglobin was nice and high at 132, platelets were 247 and ANC was 1,500. So no concerns whatsoever.

They are very conscientious here and have made contact with one of the pediatric oncologists in London so in the highly unlikely event that we have any significant concerns while we're on our trip we know who to call and they know that we exist and what the circumstances are. On the one hand it is very unnerving to think that we are living with a disease that entails highly trained medical specialists in different cities making contact and talking about us just because we are making a simple trip to visit family, but on the other hand it is reassuring to know what to do if there is some emergency.

Malcolm is doing great. We had another speech therapy appointment this week. We are working on building his vocabulary of action words so this month are supposed to sign "give" and "bath" like crazy and also try to sign words like "come" and "go" more so that he will adopt these signs. He has started imitating them already so am hopeful he will start using them himself soon. We're also supposed to make sure we are modelling signs as much as possible when we are conversing with him, and repeat and stress simple sounds in hopes that he will imitate them verbally. He is starting to try to say a few more words verbally (for example, he sometimes says "duh" for down, "bup" for up) so it is great to see that starting to develop.

We had a huge snowstorm here and Donovan has had lots of fun shovelling. I also took him sledding again today which he loves. He is very excited to be turning 5 on Saturday and in fact has told me "Mommy, I'm so es-cited to have my birthday and be 5." We registered him for school this week and can hardly believe that he is old enough to start school next fall...

Mary Ellen