Living, loving & taking on life!

All right I know I didn’t keep to my promise of updating often, but I am now and I have a lot to say.
At the end of my school holidays I had some visitors from Holland and they were really cool people. It was the van Dorp clan, my father's good old friend and his three kids. They stayed with us for four weeks. We showed them around and we even ended up going to Cairns with them for one week! 

In Cairns we did so much that it is hard to name them all. We mostly lay at the beach, swam in the pool and did all these fun activities including horse back riding the oldest forest in the world! I loved the hot weather and I wish I could go back and do it all over again. Sadly our Dutch friends had to leave and go back to Holland. I really miss them but we stay in contact.

The video is taken in Queensland when me and my brother saw this old piano at a market and we just started playing this song.

A few weeks later we had some more visitors and this time they were from Singapore. They stayed only for two weeks but still had lots of fun. We took them on winery tours (of course not with me...) and all of the good places to go. All of us even went to the Royal Adelaide show! I went on two rides and they both went really, really fast. Again the Singaporeans had to leave and they had to wake up at 5:30am, which is when I woke up too. Ever since that day I have said to myself to wake up earlier and go for a jog or bike ride with my dog Gemma. I really loved an early morning bike ride.

Moving to the present and towards my health, I am doing really good and living life. I have done some ice skating which was really good and fun! I am more active with Gemma (bike riding and walking). I am just feeling really, really, really good. Did I say I was feeling good?!

I still need to go for the regular check-ups and I really want to go as well (although I really do not want to go if that makes any sense....)

This week I had two scans one of which is a major one. So on Monday my dad took me to the hospital for an MRI which the nurses had to give me four injections because they couldn’t find a good vein. One Tuesday my dad took me the hospital again and my mum stayed with me thereafter, and I had a nuclear injection which I thought was awesome. I felt like becoming the Hulk... 

Lastly on Wednesday my dad took me again to the hospital to have an MIBG scan which was the important full body scan. Next week Tuesday I have a check up to see the results of the scan, and I am really nervous, although there is nothing to be nervous about I think....

Anyway! To sum up my ‘in remission state’ I am living, loving and taking on life!

I'm so excited!

I am so excited to finally get my port out. I cannot explain my ecstasy but I am also unsure. Yes it is an exciting event but it has always sort have been a safety for me. If I got sick, they would send me to the hospital and immediately they would access my port. When I got to the hospital for my treatment they would access me. So I refer my port as something good. It gave me the treatment I needed and took the cancer away.
Don’t get me wrong! I would love it to be out, but I’m still unsure. People say you should be happy, there’s nothing to be unsure about. They don’t understand. If that’s not there and my cancer comes back, which is highly unlikely, there won’t be an immediate solution. I guess I’m just gonna have to deal with that after.

I can joke about having cancer now. My friends ask each other what is the scariest experience you have ever had. They assume that my scary experience would be having cancer. I would say “I nearly fell backwards on the ice! That was scary!” Trust me on this, it is!

For now. I’m going to enjoy whatever life throws at me! Anyway I hope to update as often as I can! BYE!

Last Treatment Day

And finally the day has arrived that we all have been looking out for. Saskia took her last treatment pills today, 26 January 2015. This marks another major milestone in her journey and hopefully is a line in the sand, marking a change of times.

There will still be countless of doctor's visits and tests to be done, starting tomorrow with a bone marrow biopsy and a CT scan, followed by an MIBG scan next week. From now on she will have every month a doctor's check-up, once every 3 months a CT scan and most likely once every 6 months an MIBG scan. But no more gruelling chemo therapy or radiation treatment, no more operations and no more pills.

Saskia also need to make a decision about the removal of her port line. We thought she couldn't wait to see that thing removed, but it is slightly more difficult than that. That port has given her comfort during her treatment. Through her port all the chemo was administered, but she also got all the good stuff. Every time when there was something not right in between hospital visits, the first thing she got hooked up to was her port. She hates it, but she also is comforted by it.

Saskia is excited about the period that lays ahead. She is also a little anxious. It is like starting a new life in a different place wondering what the other kids would think about the "newcomer".
We as a family are equally excited and anxious at the same time. We have been ripped apart and brought together again, we have been through periods of pure evil together whereby we couldn't bear to be around each other and we have been through periods of pure joy and belly laughter.
Fact is that we as a family have shared an experience which will have an effect on how we live the rest of our lives. We cannot ever go back to the "normal" we had before we embarked on this journey.

This coming year will be a year whereby we all try to get our lives back in balance. There will be a new "normal". What that is and how that will look like is still to be seen, but I reckon it's gonna be awesome!