New Relatives and a Very Busy Friday

On Thursday night we went to dinner at my mums where we met some second cousins from Russia. My mum's mum's sister's grandson and his wife. They were very nice, Grisha & Ira. Ira spoke and understood some english, Grisha not so much. They are planning on moving here in the next 12 months on Student Visas.

Today (Friday) was a very long day.

It started at about 7am when I hurried out of bed and got ready to be at the school by 8am for a talk on drugs, alcohol, smoking and cyber bullying.

It was extremely interesting with great presentations and insights from psychologists, police, researchers and youth support people. It raised some things that I couldnt even begin to imagine existed. Such as parents who let their year 8 kids leave the house on a Friday or Saturday night (any night really) with a bottle of vodka, so that they will only drink from that bottle all night, and not from a strange bottle that could be spiked.

Uhm, hello ?

14 year old kid? Shouldnt be drinking anyway?? What kind of world are we living in??

During the Q&A one girl (there were parents and students in the talk) asked about catching buses home after a party in groups, "because we can't expect our parents to come get us at 1230am"...

Uhm, hello? Why the hell not?!?! What kind of parent lets their kid leave the house on a Friday or Saturday night without having organised exactly how they are getting home, and certainly NOT on public transport!

What the hell??

Anyways, we came away from that talk a lot wiser, and I hope the kids there (from Year 8, 9 & 10) were listening very carefully.

After that I went to work for about 3 hours before having to leave again to pick up Becka and Josie and go to a Pain Study at the Childrens Hospital.

The study was very interesting too.

Since the age of about 2, Josie has had leg pain at night on and off. We always put it down to too much activity during the day.. but then I started thinking maybe it was rheumatism, because almost all the females on my mums side of the family, including myself, my sister and Becka, have always had this muscular rheumatoid type pain, since childhood. We have always said it was rheumatism, but we never actually got it diagnosed. It was usually fixed up by keeping the area warm and taking some Panadol or Neurofen.

Anyways, so we went in and the researcher did a bunch of tests on Josie to show how much she was feeling the touch. They think that the pain is caused by a high nerve sensitivity. She used different tools to touch Josie's legs, arms and tummy, and asked Josie to tell her whether she felt the touch more on one leg or the other etc. It as very interesting.

I spoke to the Dr in charge, and told him about the rheumatism that has always been in my family and he said that it probably was not rheumatism, but was actually Fibromygalia.

The 'Growing Pains' that Josie was experiencing would most likely develop into Fibromygalia as well. So now I am trying to find stuff about it ;-)

So after the study, we went to Anna's place, where Becka was babysitting Jayden for the night, and we stayed and played for a while before dropping Anna off at the station and heading home.

It was a fairly looongish day..

Should be an interesting weekend ;-)