My child has what?

On Sunday January 23, 2011 we went to a follow-up appointment at urgent care. I fully expected the doctors to confirm the diagnosis of Mono and tell us we were doing all the right things. We arrived at urgent care and they did the blood work they had been doing for days. About 90 minutes later, they said they needed to do another draw to double check something. So they drew blood again and put her on IV fluids.

As we waited for the blood work Kinley slept. About another hour or so later the doctor came in to see us. You know in the movies where you are in a doctor's office and the doctor acts like he is as devastated as you?! Yeah  FALSE! We were in the urgent care infusion area, with several people around as my daughter slept on their little gurney, I was told we think it's Leukemia. They went into the fact that the reason they had drawn blood a second time is the first draw was 78,000 , the second result was 99,000.

The doctor then told me as my child slept that we would be transported to the hospital about 2 blocks away by ambulance. We would be seen by a doctor there who had already been consulted and they were pretty sure it was Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia.  I remember calling James and telling him words I never imagined saying. I asked him to meet us at the hospital with clothes and stuff for Kin and myself.

Once the ambulance company arrived, we woke my daughter up to try to explain a little of what was going on. When we arrived at the hospital they asked us all the questions they needed to know the answers to. We were told Kin would receive a CT scan and then we would be waiting on transportation to Childrens' Hospital Los Angeles. It was all so technical and a whirlwind all at the same time.

At the hospital she was so poked and prodded so many times, so many blood draws, a new IV because they couldn't use the one that the urgent care put in even thought that was the point of the urgent care adding the one they had. They were definitely not kid friendly. We were then sent for the CT scan which later would show an enlarged liver and spleen causing the rib pain she had been complaining about. The white blood cell (WBC) was rising even more so.  After that it was just a lot of waiting pretty much for the transport to get there and take us down.

At CHLA, I kept asking the doctor what the chance of them being wrong was. They kept telling me they wouldn't have any real answers until the next day. We left her that night with her father as James and I went and tried to get a couple hours of sleep. I was hoping I would wake up in the morning and go in and they would tell me they were all wrong. Sadly that was not so..