Tuesday, February 17, 2009

We're back....

Our family time away was lots of fun,  we got back on Sunday night.  Melinda is going to upload some photos and possibly tell of more adventures, but in the meantime we are home and well and had a very relaxing and normal time.  

We did three huge jigsaw puzzles, played guitar...wrote a diet song for Melinda (Phil might let you in on that family joke)...had a huge jellyfish fight on the beach, did lots of swimming....ate good food..... it was fun times all round.   Just what we needed.  

For now life is back to a strange kind of "normal" in our house.  Well not that I'm actually there...I (Kris) have just moved on campus at BCV in Lilydale.  But anyway there a strange kind of normal going on as life continues until things start to change, not sure when that will be.  How is that for vague :) 

In the meantime thank you all for your continued prayers and support. 

Kris

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Background.....

I thought it would be a good idea, to give everyone the story that had led to where we are now, and also in introduce you to us, the crazy family Phil is a part of.


This is all us kids, from left to right, Sherryn, Melinda, Jenny, Loveena (Ben's wife), Ben, Phil and me (Kris)...in age order we are actually B, K, S, M, P, J.

This was taken in November at Phil's birthday dinner. He just turned 17.

Phil was first diagnosed with Osteosarcoma in the bone above his knee in 2004. An osteosarcoma is a solid tumour inside the bone, he had a really sore leg, caused by the tumour kind of stretching the bone. He was treated with very high dose chemotherapy and in the middle of that year had an operation called a 'Rotation Plasty'....you should google it, very interesting. They removed the part of his leg, mid thigh to just below knee that had the cancer, but kept the lower part and rotated it so it was backwards and put it back on, i have to find a picture, cause its amazing. He was in a reclining cast for about 13 weeks and having chemo at the same time.

After surgery Phil had another few months of chemo, until he was really sick and the doctor was
satisfied that the treatment he had was enough.
(12 year old Phil...how cute is he).

The following year, Phil did lots of physiotherapy, then ended up cracking the bone and having to have plaster again!....

Phil with mum after Physio....he's only 12 and taller than her already!

Life in the Guilford household returned to some level of, normal can't be the word!

In about May of 2007, Phil had a scan that showed a mass on one of his lungs. Lungs are scanned regularly cause Osteosarcoma tends to spread to lungs. (When cancer spreads the resulting tumours are called metastasis). They couldn't biopsy cause it was in a tricky spot so they gave him chemo and it shrunk and then they operated. Strange this is though, they aren't actually sure if it was cancer or not....

Phil decided before that round of chemo to have some fun with his hair....unfortunately instead of falling out very quickly as with the super nasty Cisplatin chemo,
Phil's hair stuck around for a long time! It was pretty funny, because we actually thought that his hair wasn't going to fall out at all and that the new style had been a waste of time....but eventually it came loose.

In December of 07 Phil had a minor brain haemorrhage, which was caused by a tangle of capillaries randomly bursting....rare and random. That resulted in a more serious bleed taking place in January and Phil being airlifted down to Melbourne from home in Gippsland.
He didn't have to stay in for too long and was readmitted about a month later and had surgery to remove the bleed (Feb 08). FYI...when they do brain surgery they cut a zigzag scar on your head so the hair can grow back around it....it looks cool too!

In about April-May of last year (08) Phil started getting a sore leg. Because he wears a prosthesis they just thought it needed some adjustment, but that didn't change anything...and eventually an MRI scan revealed that he had a tumour in the bone in his pelvis.

So more chemo....by about July/Aug Phil was 184cm and 45kgs...too skinny for chemo...well that's what it does to people eh. So he had a break and then had about 6 weeks of radiation. The treatment finished up just at the end of November in time for Ben and Lovy's wedding in the second week of December.

(Kris (me) and Phil)

So we had the wedding, which was lovely... and Christmas and then somewhere in there Phil had a CT scan and then in the first week on January he had an MRI. These were to see how the site in the pelvis was going and to check that his chest was clear.

Phil was one of Ben's groomsmen...here he and Jenny are looking smart as. (Can't believe they are the youngest two!)


We got the results last Thursday saying they had found 5 lumps on his lungs, the biggest one was about a malteser size (I think) and the smallest ones a few millimeters.

So that brings us up to now.

Hope that is helpful!

Kris x

It has to start somewhere....

Dear Friends,

We know that the address for this blog is terrible. Very lame. But it made Phil laugh, in fact, he thought it was great.

This blog has been created to help keep everyone in the loop and updated as we head out on this journey together. I feel like this is an accurate way of sharing information, because it can be updated quickly, as things change and as people change their minds etc....

It's hard enough with the six kids in our family to keep everyone on the same page. But we want you to be.

For now other than what is in the background (that i am about to write!) we don't have any news....other than the fact that we are going on a 10 day family holiday to have some quality time (till the 15th feb...count backwards).

We will see you when we get back!

Kris