It was a very positive day. Firstly, Barnaby has not got any signs of Rb at this time; Mr Hungerford will check him again in 6 months, but we are told it's unlikely Rb will develop in a child of his age. Barnaby was very brave when being given the anaesthetic. He was a little grumpy when he came round, but soon got his appetite back and ordered me to fetch him some lunch!
It's fabulous news again with Fintan; in fact I'm overwhelmed with happiness writing this for you. He is responding really well to the chemotherapy and the tumours on his retinas are reducing and calcifying nicely. Mr Hungerford spoke to us after examining Fintan's eyes and told us that he is very happy with the progress and that this is after only 3 courses of chemotherapy. He also gave us some before and after photographs of Fintan's retinas which clearly show the improvement. I have scanned and uploaded them below. I won't try and explain them too much as I am not an expert, but the top two pictures are the 'before' images. You can see the three large round whitish blobs which are the tumours. In the bottom two 'after shots', you can see that the tumours are more chalky and appear less dense. We were quite shocked at the size of the original tumours, but Mr Hungerford explained that these are close-ups of the centres of the retinas, the retina is much larger so the tumours do not cover the whole surface; however, the centre is responsible for detailed vision, which is why it affects the sight so much.
Fintan's Retinas (click the image to see a larger version).
Here are a few photos from today:
Fintan sleeps off the anaesthetic.
Barnaby soon bounced back to his normal, playful, self.
One very tired and worried, but still very beautiful and brilliant mum.
Clearly the headphones are not for Barnaby sized heads. But not to worry, Daddy's gloves will hold them in place (for the nerds at Motorola, they are MC70 gloves!).
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