Corrections

I made corrections in my post below because my father said I had some of the details of his last moments in the camps wrong.

Where There Is Life There Is Hope

I'm embarrassed to say that I still can't report on a baby name.  I was hoping that on my next post I would be able to let you all know her name.  Soon I'm sure.

Since my article in The Age, I was contacted by someone from an excellent blog called mymeso.  The blog is an excellent resource on the latest mesothelioma research and on people with mesothelioma.  They did a post about me and so I checked out their blog where I read the story about Debbie Brewer who has a blog called Mesothelioma and Me.  She did a treatment called chemoembolization which is traditionally used to treat liver cancer.  Yesterday her oncologist told her that he doesn't need to see her anymore as she is in remission.  There are so many amazing things happening with technology, I think when you have a terminal illness, you have to just hope that some cure will come up before you die and that you find out about it and can afford it.

My father at age 15 was sent to concentration camps during WWII.  He first arrived in Birkenau and then spent most of his time in Auchwitz.  From Auchwitz they were sent on a death march to Buchenwald where thousands were killed on the way.  From Buchenwald in April 1945 just before it was to be liberated, five thousand inmates including my father were put on a train in an open goods wagon which for 4 weeks had no where to go as Germany was shrinking.  On the 8th of May the train pulled into Teresienstadt which had been liberated.  A head count 2 days after arrival showed that only about 250 out of the 5000 survived the trip.   Dad was taken from the train by a stretcher to the hospital and overheard a doctor telling the Red Cross nurses that my father would probably die before the next day.   He then spend the next few years in hospital in Czechoslovakia suffering from tuberculosis which he acquired while in the camps along with typhus.  Luckily with a prognosis of only months to live, relatives in the US sent him a new drug, streptomysin, that could cure tuberculosis.  He was the first person in Czechoslovakia to have tried the drug and it cured him.  He was saved twice at the last minute.  

Had he died I would not have been born just as had I died my beautiful daughter would not have been born.  While there is life there is hope.  

Link to The Age article corrected

I just noticed that the link to the article in The Age was linked to page 2 of the article.  Here is a link to the full article.

Finally another post

I think it is about time I started blogging again.  My last post was about an article on page 3 of The Age about me.  Now almost 4 and a half months later there is another article in The Age about me - this time I made the front page.  Here is a link to the online version.  

I don't know why I hardly blogged through my pregnancy.  I wrote on earlier posts that I should do regular posts so that people don't worry about me.  Another blogger who I became friends with was suffering from a brain tumor and I always felt reassured when she posted on her blog. She used to comment on my blog here under the name Team SAK and first contacted me after coming across my blog.  We were both doing chemotherapy at the time at Cabrini.  She started her blog around the same time as me and used to post very regularly.  Sadly she passed away on October 16th having posted her last beautiful post on September 6th.  I feared that she wasn't doing to well when she hadn't posted for ages.  I haven't blogged for so long that I assume no one reads my blog anymore anyway but I know that in the past, people have told me that they were also reassured when I posted on my blog.

I was on the Channel 7 news tonight.  I have embedded the segment below.  Also if you want to download a clip of the segment you can do it from here.  There is no need to sign up for anything, just click on the 'download this file' button.  

So we now have a beautiful daughter who is absolutely perfect (no bias there) but after 3 weeks today, we still haven't decided on a name for her. Patrick and I each have favourite names but nothing in common. We do have names that we can both agree on but none that we both are particularly crazy about. We also haven't had much time to sit down and seriously work on this but I'm hoping during this next week while Patrick is off from work, that we will come up with something.

Just prior to the birth we bought a new camera so I'll upload the photos from the camera and put some up on the blog.

The article about me in The Age

I was apparently on page 3 of The Age today.  I have only seen it online - Patrick is going out now to buy the paper.  Here is a link to it.   I realised it must be in a prominent position when I started getting phone calls from friends this morning saying they saw it.  I also got a call from someone from Today Tonight current affairs show on channel 7 - but they woke me up.   I told them to call me back at 11:30am but they never did.

I also forgot to mention on my previous post that I had a chest x-ray last week and it is all clear.  They only did one xray and I had to wear a lead skirt to protect the baby.  Anyway its all good.

Entering week 19

It's been eight weeks since my last post.  So much has happened and I haven't posted for so long.  During the first 6 weeks I was going through withdrawal.  I had to ween myself of the fentanyl patches that I was on for pain and it was a terrible time.  That on top of suffering from morning sickness and low energy - I didn't feel like blogging.  Then after that I thought probably nobody bothers reading my blog anymore since I've left it for so long.  In any case I promised Paul, my twin brother that I would update my blog and I do want to get back to blogging too.  

As of tomorrow I will be 19 weeks pregnant.  I get a weekly email from a site called babycenter that I'm registered with.  They tell me exactly where my baby is at each week and what I can expect to feel.  So this week my baby was the size of a bell pepper but as of tomorrow it will be the size of a large heirloom tomato.  I'm not sure what that is but they tell me it is 6 inches head to bottom.  I found out the sex of the baby but Patrick didn't want to know so I have to keep it a secret.  

Patrick started a new job this week and I am back at work part-time - 2 or three days a week.  

Yesterday I had 2 phone calls from people wanting to interview me.   One was from The Age newspaper and the other from Cabrini Hospital's newsletter.   Today The Age reporter interviewed me in the morning and just now I finished a photo shoot.  There should be a big story in the Saturday Age and I'll send a link if it is published online.  Cabrini want to do a story on me because they see me as a success story.  They interviewed me on the phone and will do the photos in August.  I guess I do have a good story but my main reason for doing the interview for The Age was to spread the word about the dangers of asbestos.  That is the angle they are supposed to take but we'll see how it turns out.  The photographer was keen to show off my belly in the photo.

I also had a phone call today from the woman I mentioned in my previous post from Adelaide who had mesothelioma and was pregnant.  She had her baby now already.  We spoke for a while and she seems lovely.  We will catch up with her when we make a trip to Adelaide in August.

I got an invitation to be facebook friends with another Anita Steiner from Uruguay.  I've always wanted to meet another Anita Steiner. I googled and there are a few of us out there.   There is Anita Steiner the professional cyclist, the Rabbi, the author of children books, the artist and the list goes on.

Well I won't go on but I will post again soon (I know I shouldn't be making these promises).  Perhaps I'll post on Saturday with a link from the article in The Age.

Baby Photos

I've been back to work now for 2 weeks.  Not full time, just a couple of days a week and not even full days but its a start.  

The first week was very difficult getting up with all the nausea, but one I got moving it became a lot easier.  This week was easier still so I think I'm getting over the nausea and hopefully next week when I end my first trimester I will be back to normal.  I still get very tired though and feel the need to take naps during the day.  I think that is not wholly from the pregnancy but also from the patches I use which are like synthetic morphine.  I use them to help with the pain following my surgery that cut through so many nerves.  I'm now slowly weening myself off that. 

For the last several months, every few days I had shocking nerve pain and restlessness and was bed ridden about 2 times a week.  I only discovered 2 weeks ago that this was due to withdrawal pain from the Fentanyl Patches.  I was changing the patches every 3 days as prescribed but they were only lasting 2 days so every third day I was suffering withdrawal symptoms and yet none of the doctors could tell me what was causing the pain until it finally clicked and I realised what it must be.  I phoned Judith, my sister in law's sister in Sydney, who is a doctor in palliative care and asked her what were the symptoms of withdrawal from fentanyl.  What I was experiencing was exactly as she described. 

I can't remember if I mentioned back in December about an article in the paper about a women in Adelaide who had been diagnosed with mesothelioma 10 years prior, and was pregnant with her second child.  When I read it at the time I thought I had a lot of similarities with her. -  I was from Adelaide and I believed I was in remission with Meso although it wasn't yet official.   She was in 10 years remission which was why she was in he paper but still I had a feeling I that I was just like her.  Little did I know that I would also be pregnant less than 6 months later.  Here is the article.

Photos:  My ultrasound images in 3D.  Fetus at 10 weeks.