Back to UCLH. Back to Maria our oncologist of old for review now. Back to where it all began. It is strangely reassuring to see her and she is delightful with Rose. We've had the most intense encounters of our lives with this woman. She's never seen Rose upright as she had already broken her femur by the time we met and was in traction on chemo and morphine. Oh how we reminisce. She tells her that she is walking like a supermodel and Rose immediately recognises that here is someone who speaks her language.
The play specialist takes Rose off and teaches her how to knit in the newly gorgeous brand new outpatients clinic while we catch up with Maria and review the last two years since we last saw one another. It's all fine until she asks us to go and get a chest x-ray and then I want to throw up. I wasn't prepared for that and even worse she will write to us with the results. It's still only ten weeks since surgery - it must be fine.
We get it done quickly and take Rose out for lunch. The restaurant is full of people just on their lunch hour, getting on with their day, doing their thing. No one else has come from a paediatric cancer unit. I look around and wonder how many of them have eight year olds who are tearing around their school playgrounds in the spring sunshine. Lucky, lucky bastards.
