How it all Began
Well Paige had been complaining about pain in her leg for a couple of weeks. Took her to the Dr., who decided it was most likely growing pains. But later that week she could no longer walk, and was hanging onto furniture to support her weight. Took her to emergency. Many x-rays later, we were told that there was a spot of translucency on her right femur (thigh bone). We would need to go to the orthopedic clinic at BC Children's Hospital to have it diagnosed. During this visit to emerg they did blood work that came back with "odd" results. But the pediatrician spoke with the hematologist at BCCH and more blood work was done, which I was told came out fine.
So we went to our visit with the orthopedic Dr. at the clinic. Paige had a CT of her legs. On cross section your bone looks like a donut (there's bone marrow in the middle). At a particular spot on Paige's femur it looks like a bite has been taken out of the donut. But they decided they weren't worried enough to open her up to see what it was. So we went home with a prescription and a huge load of frustration.
Paige didn't get any worse, but she didn't get better either. She seemed to always be hurting herself. You could barely touch her and she would cry in pain. She wouldn't come to me anymore when she was hurt, and would run away saying "don't touch me". I was very concerned. She was covered in bruises, and it didn't seem that she was bumping into things that often. She bumped her elbow one day, cried, and then carried on playing. But that night she screamed about the pain in her elbow until I gave her some Ibuprofen. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what to do. We had already seen the specialist.
Luckily the orthopedic clinic called to see how she was doing. They thought the pain would clear up on it's own. When I told them she was still symptomatic, they said I should bring her back.
So back to the clinic we went. This time they did a very thorough exam, but Paige screamed in pain all of a sudden during the exam, when it had been okay previously. So the did some repeat x-rays looking at her knee closely. The Dr. said that the bone in her knee (basically the end of her femur) looked "moth eaten". He was concerned that she was so pale and decided to send her for blood work to see if she had a bone infection.
Well that would have been a blessing. As it was the lab began calling him, as they were very concerned about what they were seeing. Her platelets (the cells in your blood that clot) and her hemoglobin (carries oxygen on your red blood cell) were very low. The orthopedic Dr. called the hematology/oncology Dr. to come up and see us.
Immediately we were given the devastating news that it was leukemia. He assured us it was entirely curable, it would just be a long road.
The purpose of this blog is to give all our family, friends, and co-workers a place to get up to date info on what's happening and how we are doing. I have my laptop here and will be checking. So far my email doesn't work, so it is best to facebook me, call me on my cell, or comment on the blog.
3 comments:
Don't feel bad about changing OB's, he's the one who stopped doing primary care and from what I heard wants to stop doing OB stuff and concentrate on infertility anyway. He wouldn't take me for my last pregnancy so I switched too.
Why are you having a C/S??
Anglea who? I know more than one. Anyways it's an elective repeat. Paige was a C/S and I have an android pelivis (heart shaped) that makes a vaginal delivery very difficult if not impossible.
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