Surgery result unknown for another week

Press, 18 September 1982, Page 6

Surgery result unknown for another week

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney

The parents of the bone marrow transplant boy, Gareth Cotton, aged five, have another week of worry before they know if the lifesaving surgery has any chance of success. Gareth, who suffered from leukaemia, underwent the bone marrow ■ transplant on Wednesday and has come through the surgery well.,' "But it will be 10 days before the ’' bone marrow starts to grow and until then we do not know what is ahead of us," said Mrs Florence Cotton. She and Mr Cotton were now "just playing the waiting game” as they looked, after and kept their somhappj' at Sydney’s Prince of'- Wales Children's Hospital.. “We are just taking each

day as it comes," said Mrs Cotton.

Gareth, was '“very well" considering what he had been through and they were not at this stage expecting any problems.. "He plays, quite a bit and is quite happy. When he gets tired he just lies’down with a book. He keeps occupied," Mrs Cotton said. Gareth’s brother, Damian, aged four, the donor for the bone marrow transplant, left the hospital yesterday. Mr and Mrs Cotton spend as much time as possible with Gareth at the hospital and while they, are there during, the week their eldest child, Rebekah, aged seven, attends a schoolroom at the hospitalU ; ahd ..the',, youngest child, - Adam, imaged’ i two. spends two hours at. the child-minding unit.