It's been quite a week in the Fraser household, featuring James's liver issues, David going to Joburg for the day on Wednesday and Charis being taken for a precautionary blood test to make sure she doesn't have leukemia!

After visiting the gastro-enterologist to check out what's been happening with James's liver, he recommended discontinuing his anti-convulsant (Epilim) to see if that would help the liver recover. But when they got the blood test results the next day, they found that his liver condition has already improved remarkably! Basically all but one of the enzyme levels were back to normal, and the one that wasn't had improved a fair bit as well. James's paediatrician expects that it should come back to normal without changing his drugs, so there's a bit of a debate now as to whether to stop the Epilim or not - his doctor thinks it was probably a transient viral hepatitis (but not the standard Hep A or Hep B)

Since Sunday Charis has been complaining of pains in her legs and on Sunday particularly she was falling over a lot. With those being some of the symptoms that James had in his legs that led to the leukemia we were obviously nervous! So on Wednesday when James had his appointment with his doctor, Danielle asked her what we should do about Charis. She said for our peace of mind it's best to test, so they went straight off and had a blood test! Charis handled it brilliantly and didn't even cry and James was a great support with all his experience of having needles!

We got her blood results later that afternoon and Charis is clear which is great... the only abnormality was that her white blood cell count was even lower than James's which has been low - this apparently means that she's probably had a viral infection recently.

Charis has been struggling a lot and it's hard to tell how much is emotional and how much is her not being well so it helps a bit to know she has been sick. James has also been quite discontent and struggling - he seems to have perked up a bit as his liver seems to have improved... We do wonder if we've all had a virus and that's why we haven't been well. Whichever way we've felt very stretched both physically and emotionally! Discipline with sick and struggling kids feels like a hard balance to get right...

On the positive side both James and Charis have grown up so much recently - Charis is talking away and her vocab is incredible. James is getting all responsible and helpful and ready for going to preschool next year!

We went to see the gastro-enterologist today as planned to check out why James's liver enzyme levels were high. He said that the most likely reason is that some of the drugs he's on can gradually produce toxicity in the liver over protracted periods of time. This can eventually produce liver scarring etc which is not reversible, but if caught early enough, they can sometimes switch the drugs etc so that it doesn't have a permanent effect.

Over the last month James has been feeling nauseous a fair amount (he hasn't really struggled with this over the previous few months) - often retching at the sight of food and/or not wanting to eat, which has been quite stretching... it's been a little bit better the last week but still there. On Thursday they did some blood tests on him and his liver enzyme levels were quite high, which could be a cause, so tomorrow we're taking him to see a gastroenterologist about it (they told us not to worry or panic! Nice reassuring people, these medical folks are :-))

In the mean time we've had Joy (Danielle's sister) staying with us for the last week which has been lovely for all of us. The next few weeks are fairly full of family and friends coming over - we're going away for a week with all of David's immediate family which will be really special (Andrew and Louise and Mia are about to move to England, Debbie and Jonny and Samuel are visiting from England, and Anni and Richard from Joburg - and his parents)

With all his treatment, James has gotten interested in the different blood cells and how they work. His favourites are the macrophages which are white blood cells that do a cunning trick of growing arms to swallow bacteria etc (see an amazing animation and a time-lapse video).

The other week, he was sleep-talking and was obviously dreaming - he said "My brain can control the macrophage" - and went straight back to sleep

Then on Monday I was reading a book from the library about the Body (again fascinating to him) and there was a section explaining how in the Spleen, macrophages take apart old red blood cells so there parts can be recycled.

We finished reading and he said to me, "Daddy, I'm a macrophage and you're a red blood cell. When you're old and can't work any more, I'm going to tear you to pieces in the spleen"

James had his Bone Marrow Biopsy (which happens routinely every 3 months) and Lumbar Puncture (and monthly intravenous chemo!) last week. The operation went smoothly, although he felt a lot more queasy than usual and ended up throwing up all over the car. David had to go straight off to conduct an interview after dropping us at home ... so it made it interesting for him with the state of the car!!!!) We got the results on Tuesday, telling us that he is still clear from leukemia! The Prof (his doctor in charge of his treatment) explained to us that we are exactly where you should be ... but you've got a long road left to walk! These were honest, but sobering words for us and reminded us of the continued need for prayer in many dimensions! We thank God that He is our strong foundation, never shifting or 'wobbled' by events or difficult happenings!

So, on October the 5th we went to Spier in Stellenbosch. I blame sunstroke for putting mayonnaise instead of sun-tan cream on Charis's face. Basically I was looking at her, not the containers, they were next to each other on the table, I put what I thought was the sunblock on my hand without looking, started applying it to her face, and thought that's a bit yellow, and it's not rubbing in very well... oops!

There's a great art-imitating-life cartoon on the subject at The Western Nostril, that great source of cartoons that could have been puns.

In a recent SABC article SA to earn millions from biggest ivory sale, the following peculiar sentence is found in the last paragraph:
Parts of the 45% [of the ivory from the period 1988 to 1994] are of elephant moralities.
Perhaps moralities should read mortalities

Lex Loizides has been doing a great series of blogs on church history, but little did I know that he's actually a first-hand source! For example, he's just done a post on Wycliffe, who was a fantastic preacher as can be seen in this great painting:

John Wycliffe. In the villages and towns the people listened eagerly to Wycliffe and his preachers reading passages from the Bible - in English. One in particular, in the lower right hand corner, seems in earnest prayer... perhaps due to the proximity of the axe to his face.

Unfortunately we've all come down with colds this week. James woke up crying on Thursday night with a sore ear from an ear infection. He saw his paediatrician the next day with the nice side-benefit that she saw how he's been limping. So he's going to see a physio some time which may help. It's a nice relief to feel that we have some medical support on this.

Yesterday Danielle's parents arrived from Shetland to our great excitement. They're here for around two weeks which is lovely... It seems Cape Town has finally reached spring with at least half the days being nice and warm.

James has been having leg pains intermittently over the last year. They've tended to be sudden and severe. At times his legs also buckle underneath him. But it's been sporadic and the doctors have struggled to work out what causes it.

The last week he's had more frequent (but not as severe) pains, with cramps and tired legs, and fallen over a few times. He's been limping a lot. It's quite demoralizing for him. We took him back to his brilliant paediatric neurologist today as she wanted to see him when he actually has the symptoms, but unfortunately he didn't seem to be struggling that much when we were there... so she couldn't see anything more than what she's seen before which is inconclusive as to the cause.