Relief

The blood tests came back and Nick's blood levels are normal or close enough to normal that we are no longer concerned with the dreaded L-word "leukemia". Just typing the word makes me shudder. The doctors in their own words were "all scratching our heads" trying to figure out why Nick's neutrophil would go from zero to normal overnight. A lab error can not account for this change. So he is no longer neutropenic which was scary. Now we go back in three weeks to determine if he has something called cyclic neutropenia.

Also his platelet count went from 7000 to over 750,000 overnight. That didn't seem possible to the doctors and they suspected a lab error where two zeros were dropped. They double checked and indeed Nick went from 7000 to 750,000 in 24 hours. No lab error. So he no longer is in danger of a "spontaneous bleed" due to thrombocytopenia which was a major concern and the reason why we had to be admitted so quickly to the hospital. In essence he could have bled out internally spontaneously, without any warning, for no reason at all - because he didn't have enough platelets to stop a bleed.

(Are you sick of all the Wiki-links? Alright I'll stop. The learning curve is steep on this stuff and I have no real grasp of the subject. I thought the links might help.)

So it is over. At least the scary part. I don't even care that no one can explain what happened or WHY IT HAPPENED. I don't know if it will happen again. They said that as a guess it could have been caused by some sort of virus that pretty much flattened poor Nick's immune system. That is only a guess. Or it could be that cyclic thing I mentioned above. Whatever it is - as long as it isn't life or death . . . I don't care.

The doctor told me they don't get to deliver good news like ours very often so she and her colleagues were arguing over who got to give us the good news. We were in the pediatric special care unit where there were a lot of children with cancer and other serious illnesses. I felt so happy to be leaving the hospital with all the sick kids wandering the halls pulling along their IV poles. But I also felt so guilty. We got really lucky and they didn't. One little boy was at the nurse's desk playing UNO with a nurse and another little boy (both boys were really sick and wore masks to protect them from germs) and the nurse congratulated us on the good news. This little boy looked up at me and smiled under his mask because WE got good news. He happened to have pneumonia because chemo destroyed his immune system. He was happy for us. It made me want to start crying all over again.

Thank you for sending your positive thoughts our way. I learned with AJ's back issues that having a good support system is half the battle when you deal with stressful things. I got so many emails and phone calls from people. And it made me realize how fortunate we are to have you guys. (It also made me realize how many lurkers I have because they outed themselves when they emailed me their offers of support.) Thanks again.