EXCERPT FROM EMAIL TO FRIEND

". . .thanks for asking, . . Rose is thriving. She's fantastic liver-wise, and is busily catching up on the milestones she missed while lying on her back. She. . . sleeps beautifully, eats like a horse, and is great fun - we're all having a ball. That Royal Children's Hospital is bloody spectacular, with its cast of hundreds of brainy and kind people who looked after Rose and our entire family. They didn't want just to keep Rose alive, but to become a healthy girl.

Whenever we visit the hospital for one appointment or another, it takes us the whole day, really. We visit her ward, of course, but outside the ward we bump into so many people who we became close to, from the dears who sell raffle tickets at the front door, to the technicians in obscure little specialty departments, to the shrinks, the PSAs, and even the guys who used to make our coffee nice and strong first thing in the morning after a sleepless night with Rose. And of course the other fellow patients in there, some of whom aren't nearly as lucky as Rose has been. Life is great, but we'll never forget the people who made it that way."