Hi All

Luca had her six monthly scans done recently and the results were sent to Prof Mendelow, her surgeon in the UK.

Below is his responce:

"Yes I have and we were very pleased to see how much recovery there has been. The small chronic subdural should absorb with time. Many of the previous infarcts appear to have shrunk: a child's brain is amazing. As far as we can see the bypass and the synangiosis is working well. Only an invasive intra-arterial angiogram would prove patency but none of us would wish to subject her to the added risks of arterial puncture. I'm sorry for the delay but I've been to San Diego, Munster and Kaunas in the last 6 weeks and I'm off with flu right now!

So, while she is recovering and improving, we think that we should just continue with benign surveillance. If it is possible to get some sort of perfusion scan before and after Diamox (Acetazolamide) IV, that would give us a revised baseline from which to judge future developments. The perfusion scans that are available in different places are CT perfusion, MR perfusion, SPECT, PET  and Cold Xe CT. Any one of those 5 (before and after Diamox except for PET) would be perfect. I realise that it might be difficult to organise but you could ask your paediatric neurologist. Please forward this to him if you wish as I have deleted his email to me of a few weeks ago because of time and storage pressures."

I'm very happy with this news, time to crack a bottle of bubbly!

It's so difficult to fully let yourself go and celebrate stuff like this because, as we all know, it's not over. And I guess it never will be.

But hey, for today, we celebrate!!

Mark (Luca's Dad)

Mark,

this is really a great news! Happy for Luca and your family.

LuckyMe

Hooray, Mark! Hip, hip hooray for Luca! This evening, I'll raise a glass to her continued good health.
Kim

Great news!  thanks for posting.

Jody

That is Great!!! Thank you for the up date. I would definiatly celibrate this milestone.
Becky