Saturday 10th September 2011

Okay I missed updating August didn't I. Must be the left over holiday laid back attitude! We had a fabulous time in Cairns from the 12th to the 20th August.The weather was great. It was 28 degrees on average and beautiful and sunny. It rained twice overnight but it didn't affect us at all.We did lots of activities - the boys played golf at Paradise Palms whilst Amy and I went on the Kuranda scenic rail and walked around the markets then back on the Skyrail. It was a great day with beautiful scenery. We went go-carting, hit some balls at a driving range, played tennis and squash, lots of swimming and eating! It was great to do as much or as little as we wanted.We went out to the Great Barrier Reef on one of the last days. We were originally going to go to Green Island and snorkel but the tourist agent said it's nice but it's a bit like throwing a bit of coral in your bathtub. You need to go out to the Outer Barrier Reef. So we did. As always I got seasick but recovered through the time we had out at the reef to go snorkelling and was fine on the return trip. The kids had a ball. Amy originally didn't want to go out into the open ocean and swim away from the boat but she ended up being the first back in the water each time. Luke and Amy had the good fortune of swimming alongside a turtle. There were lots of fish and the coral was beautiful. I got to see Nemo so I was pretty happy. On the last day we went driving around the waterfall circuit. We all had the intention of swimming in the waterfalls but only Murray and Amy were brave enough. The water was icy cold! So cold that they both had trouble breathing once they swam out under the waterfall.It was so nice to get away as a family for the first time since Luke got sick. Even though we had a reminder of his leukaemia when we had to make a visit to Cairns Base Hospital to arrange a blood sample for back home to check up on him!

We were lucky to be away from Canberra the week that we were in Cairns as it had been raining and lucky to get over 14. Half the temperature we were having whilst in Cairns. Then reality hit when we came back to freezing Canberra. We've had some lovely days and back to cold days again since. Hopefully we are on the tail end of the cold weather and now that Spring is here we can get into the warmer weather.

Luke finished up on his 2 month contract with DAFF just before the holiday. However they really liked having him there and he liked the work so he managed to get his uni timetable condensed into 2 full days so he is now back at DAFF 3 days per week on contract till Christmas. This is fantastic experience for him, not to mention a boost for his bank balance. He does get a bit tired at times but seems to soldier on.

Luke's chemo currently runs in 3 monthly cycles with no breaks in between. He started a new cycle on Monday 5th September. We saw the specialist on our return from Cairns and he decided to keep him long term on 50% dosage of his chemo tablets as his liver doesn't seem to cope with the full dosage. At the start of each cycle Luke has to have a lumbar puncture to inject chemo into the spine to make sure no leukaemia cells floating around in the spinal fluid up to the brain. So he had this on Monday. He was down to having blood tests once a fortnight instead of weekly and he had this on Thursday. I got a call from the nurse saying that his liver function tests were up again. The ALT was up to 183 (normal person is no higher than 55) and Bilirubin was 51 (the specialist wants Luke's levels to remain under 30). So Luke is on hold from taking chemo tablets at the moment until his liver function tests settle down again. This is really disappointing as we don't know why it should be reacting so much especially as he is already on the reduced 50% dosage. The doctor was going to check with the specialist once we get more blood tests done this Monday coming and see whether they need to do an ultrasound on his liver to make sure all is okay. Having said Luke's liver is playing up, you wouldn't know it to look at him. He's been to Uni, working and doing assignments. He looks a bit tired but otherwise pretty normal (if there is such a thing!!). So we'll wait and see what gets decided next week and when he can resume chemo. I'll hopefully try and remember to update the blog once we know what is going on.