Each year Hallie has specialist appointments at the Royal Children's Hospital. This year we went on the Tuesday after Easter and returned on Anzac Day.
Last year her surgeon, Professor Hutson who operated on her when she was only 6 weeks old (and had seen her for a review at age 3 months, 1 year, 7 years and 10 yrs), decided that she was going so well that he did not need to see her again. I remember at the Royal Children's in 2003 when she was just a newborn, "the Prof" as he is called, saying that his aim was to do such a good job with the surgery that following her tenth birthday, he would not need to see her anymore. I remember thinking ten years was such a long way away but then here we are …
The RCH in 2003 - 6wks old.
I wish I had taken a photo of the Prof with Hallie in 2003 but I didn't think of it back then. It would have been a great photo history to have a photo of the two of them, each time they met up.
RCH 2013 with "the Prof".
But here is a pic I found of Hallie at age 7 with her and Flynn's paediatrician, Dr Atherton. He took over from Dr Hewitt who had been seeing Hallie at the LGH since she was born but then retired and Dr Atherton, moved from Sydney and took over as their paediatrician. In every 3 month period, he sees Flynn at 8 weeks (to do his bloods) (Hallie is old enough to have hers done downstairs at pathology on the same day) and then both of them at the 12 week mark (to check blood results and change med dosages if needed, blood pressure etc) and then the time starts over again unless they are really sick and admitted to hospital where Dr A just comes straight downstairs from kids ward to emergency and takes over because he knows their condition and history so well. Luckily only Flynn has been in and I have Dr A's mob number which thankfully I have never had to use.
And then this is them again just a few months ago. Time certainly flies.
This is Hallie and Flynn's paediatric endocrinologist that visits from Melbourne every six months, Dr Werther. He has been seeing Hallie since 2003 and then Flynn from 2011.
So every 12 months now, we will still have to come to the RCH and see another specialist with Hallie and the blessing is that we get to catch up with the Andrews and spend some time with them. Since Nora was born, we have been hanging out to meet her and it was so lovely getting to know her.
We got to walk with Jess and Nora and Bastian to his school for pre-kinder and check out his classroom.
Hallie and I caught the tram to the hospital. We had never caught a tram before in Melbourne and I baulked at the idea as trams seem very confusing to me. Give me the Seoul subway system, which caters very efficiently for 12 million people, anyday! Jess and Kyle don't live too far away from the hospital so Jess told me how to use her myki card and off we went and it actually wasn't that bad after all.
We had to wait a few hours at the hospital for the appointment but we knew that would probably be the case. Our record wait is 4 hrs but this time it was only 1.5hrs.
The RCH looks so good now that they have built a new one. It is so much better than the old one and I love the meerkats and the huge fish tank.
Once we had Hallie's appointment done, we had a few days to spend catching up with my Aunty, Mum's sister Sandra...
eating out…
Hallie's blurry pic of me and my old school friend Julie and her beautiful new bub, Sunday.
A few weeks ago on the TV show, The Project, they featured the winner of where the best marguerite pizza in the world was made…. and it happened to be on Lygon Street, just a few streets over from Jess' house. It was a place called 400 Gradi and It. was. Amazing.
We really loved having lots of cuddles with Nora and she was such a good baby, sleeping on the tram rides and especially loving kicking about with her nappy off in the sun.
All too soon it was time to go back home.
I really loved having the one on one time with Hallie and being able to catch up with family without being distracted by 4 other kids. :)
We missed the other kids though and Simon took a few pics of them to send, once Flynn was better.
And they were busy while we were away, pulling all the pumpkins from our garden, Mum and Sarra took a day trip to Hobart with Lisa and Simon and the boys also went on a day trip to Ulverstone to see Oma and Pop.
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