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