Sorry, I ran out of energy to complete the previous post, so here is the rest.
On Wednesday morning one of the surgeons came to see me quite early and asked if Libby was coming in because she needed to talk to all of us together. You can imagine how excited that made me feel...Libby was due in at 9.30, and so the doctor said for the nurses to call her when Libby was in.
Unfortunately, by the time Libby arrived, the doctor had been called into theatre for an emergency surgery, so there were a few extra hours for us to sweat and imagine the worst 😒
In some ways, this was good, because by the time she arrived to tell us what was going on, we had imagined all the worst possible scenarios, which made the facts she presented not seem quite as bad.
The facts being:
* the preliminary results from the biopsy of the removed section of bowel indicated that he had an illness called Burkett's Lymphoma (apparently this is a kind of cancer of the lymphatic system that occurs in children and adolescents)
* Normal treatment would be the surgery that has already been done
* When strong enough Joshua will also require chemo
* All further treatment will be done at the Lady Cilento Hospital in Brisbane
* The timing of transfer to Brisbane and all other treatment is yet to be decided – partially based on outstanding test results, and further scans to be done in Brisbane (the specific type and stage, and I guess location, need to be identified)
* We will probably all go down as a family, and there is lots of support given by the hospital system
* It is a very treatable disease and responds well to chemotherapy (if my memory serves, the 'success rate' is between 85 and 95%)
As you can imagine, this was a bit of a shock to us. However, as I said, having thought the worst did make the actual news seem not quite so bad!
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