St. Patricks Day 2009

Tighe in his green shirt courtesy of Autie Christina.

Michael checking out Tighes new teeth. Tighe was the first of the three to get a tooth. He now has his first two bottom teeth.

If anyone needs a mature babysitter with sound judgement just let me know, I'll pass on Jay's number.

Cian lands a left hook on Uncle James.

Sarah and Clara

Cian, James and Rachel

Clara and Rachel

Michael and Clara

Michael. Hairstyle courtesy of Auntie Christina

Auntie Christina and Michael

Gigi, Joe and Clara

Uncle Jay and the boys six months ago...

.... and now.

We had a very nice couple of weeks since my last update. Christina and James came for 10 days and were a great help. James is the consumate handyman, so we got a lot of those little odd jobs around the house done. And both Christina and James were a great help with the kids. We were all very sad to see them leave.

Last Saturday we all went to a St. Patricks Day dinner at the church hall in Pleasant Hill. Jay and Rachel have been organizing a fundraiser/dinner for the last few years there. It was a great day out. I've never seen so many people wearing green. It was also very nice to meet some of Jay and Rachels friends and neighbors who have been following Tighe's progress and had some very nice words of support. It was great also to see Kriste, Scott, Alex, Andrew and Emily. It had been a long time since we saw them.

Tighe has been doing great. He's happy, he's eating well, he's sleeping great and he's still smiling away. We did have a long discussion with his doctor last week. It was very reassuring. She strongly reaffirmed the fact that most kids who have what Tighe has do kick it and live normal happy and healthy lives (90+%). She did also tell us that she's beginning to think that the chemotherapy may not shrink the tumor completely from Tighe's spinal column. Even if that's the case though, she still feels the prognosis for Tighe is very good. Given the biological make-up of the tumor (what they know from the initial biopsy) she says that their experience with such tumors is that after this chemotherapy treatment it is very unlikely that they will start growing again even if they had to leave a small piece in there. Again, she still feels that if it stays close to the spinal column it's much less risky to leave it there versus doing a surgery to remove it. In many cases, after leaving a small piece, they actually find that it "spontaneously regresses", i.e it disappears without any further treatment. In a small number of cases (less than 5%) it will begin to grow again. But she said that it was extremely unlikely (way less than a 5% chance) with the biological make-up of Tighe's tumor. And if they did need to leave a piece there, they would do more than enough MRI scans to catch it before it became dangerous again.

Tighe finished up his 5th round of chemotherapy last week. He will have one more before another MRI scan. That scan will be sometime in April.

Cian and Michael are also doing great. Cian gets a little jealous if one of the other lads is being held and he's not. Michael on the other hand is so laid back he doesn't seem to mind if he's being held or if he's just lying in his crib.

Clara is also doing great. She told me she misses Auntie Christina and Uncle James. She enjoyed seeing all of her cousins last week at the St. Patrick's Day dinner.