Sunday, April 24, 2005

Dylan gets mail from the White House

I just found out that Dylan's school did something wonderfulfor Dylan. Visit the Herald Sun Newspaper to see what wonderful friends Dylan has! Thank you to everyone at Skye Primary School.

As you can see by the new photo in the "view photos" link at the bottom of this site, Dylan received mail from the White House yesterday. Dylan received several photos including a personally signed photo of President George Bush, signed “To Dylan With Best Wishes” I can’t believe that The President of the United States knows about Dylan! Other photos included were of George Bush with his wife Laura, the family cat “Willie Bush” (Black domestic short hair), the family dog “Barney Bush” (Scottish Terrier), The Presidents Air Force One, The White House, The Oval Office, Marine One, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne, and their dogs Jackson & Dave (who are both Labradors) 18 photos in total! Also enclosed was 7 information sheets, such as the biography of President George W. Bush, The Bill Of Rights, Powers and Duties Of The President etc etc. There was also an invitation for Dylan to visit The White House when he is feeling better! A huge thank you goes out to Jim Bliku from Operation Oz Kids and Maggie Grant who is Special Assistant to The President, for taking the time to organize this very special surprise.

Today is Anzac Day in Australia and to celebrate we headed to The Sunburnt Cow which is an Australian pub/bar here in New York! We were made very welcome by the owner, Heathe and his staff, who generously held a fundraising afternoon for Dylan today. As people entered the bar, they paid $10 towards Dylan’s campaign and received a pie and a pot of Fosters. Dylan had a great time watching the games of two up and as you can see by the photo, he was very happy when he picked a winner for dad. People were asked to donate 10f their winnings to Dylan’s campaign in a Fosters bucket hanging from the ceiling and many very generously did. Thank you to Tony who spent the afternoon running the game. Heathe ran around selling tickets for the chook raffle and by late afternoon a box of VB (Aussie beer) was put up for auction courtesy of the Australian Consulate. I was told that people were paying up to $50 per stubby and in total raised $1100 just for the VB!!! VB is not available in America so today it was quite literally liquid gold. I didn’t want to leave, being surrounded by so many Aussies and listening to the D.J playing Australian songs, it was just like home. The crowd sang along to many songs particularly the “Men at work” song “I come from the land down under”. Dylan ate a whole meat pie (I was very impressed) and many of our Aussie friends came along to support the afternoon, it was amazing. Even Ken Allen, the Australian Consular General of New York attended. So to Heathe and everyone at the Sunburnt cow…you rock! Thank you so much, and thank you to everyone who came along.

Tomorrow Dylan is scheduled for chemo but I will discuss with the doctors before hand about the pain that Dylan has experienced. Friday night at 4am, he woke with pain in his right shoulder/arm again but it settled after a dose of Panadol. Last night Dylan had no pain and even tolerated his G-Tube feeding overnight. Maybe the doctors will decide to do a scan or skip chemo to go straight into preparations for MIBG treatment, we will just have to see what they say.