ALL in God's Hands

It is with a heavy heart that we plead with you to lift our family up in prayer. We have had a rough few days over the last week and a half, but our world was turned upside down on Thursday of last week, Valentine’s Day nonetheless. Two weeks ago, I felt a small lymph node under Katherine’s arm, in addition to the ones that we had been feeling on her neck for a little while now. We were concerned and so I took her in to see the pediatrician. The doctor was of the opinion that the lymph nodes were small, moveable, and not in any scary place; so they should not be any cause for alarm. However, because this was the second time that I brought her in to check her lymph nodes, the doctor decided to do a CBC (complete blood count) test on her, to set our minds at ease. He also ordered an x-ray of her chest to make sure there were no swollen lymph nodes in the chest area. That afternoon, the pediatrician called me and said that they x-ray was normal, there were no nodes in the chest; however, the blood test had come back a bit abnormal. He explained to me that her white blood count, as well as her hemoglobin was just a bit under the expected ranges for a child her age, and therefore, he wanted us to meet with another doctor, a hematologist a St. Francis. Of course I was scared by the type of doctor that we had been referred to, but I stayed optimistic and we went the following day to meet with the new doctor. There was not a clear diagnosis made, as the hematologist too could not find an explanation as to why Katherine had so many little lymph nodes around her neck or why her blood counts were off, so he suggested that we just watch the counts for a few days. They did more bloodwork, and while there was some fluctuation in the numbers, her white blood count or hemoglobin never came up to the normal ranges. Under the microscope the pathologist could not identify any cells that looked suspicious, only what they referred to as “immature cells” that they thought would mature into the “normal cells”. So, the hematologist called one afternoon to ask us that we go ahead and do a bone marrow check on her to rule out leukemia. That scared me even more, leukemia! We were a little nervous to put her through that procedure, but decided to do it. We took her in last Thursday for a bone marrow check. Katherine did great, she did fight to get the IV put in her little hand, but after that she handled it like a champ. After the procedure she woke up quickly and did just fine the rest of the day. And we waited to hear from the doctor. At around 5:45 we got the call. The doctor was calling us with the results.

Unfortunately the news we received from the doctor was not positive. In fact, it was shocking and devastating at the same time. Kateli has been diagnosed with pre cursor B cell Leukemia, or Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). I will never forget what I felt in my heart as I heard the doctor speak those words to us over the phone. My heart sunk, my mouth dried up and my eyes welled up with endless tears for about the next two days. It was horrible to come to grips with that kind of news, especially seeing as how our little girl is asymptomatic.