The Diagnosis...Finally.

Today we took Myla to the Riley Hospital for Children in downtown Indianapolis for another Complete Blood Count (CBC) test. The results of the CBC would determine whether Myla needed a bone marrow test to rule out leukemia. In particular, Myla's pediatric hematologist/oncologist, Dr. Manjusha Kumar, was looking to see if Myla's white blood cell count had changed from 25,000 last week and if the abnormal cells present in last week's test were still there. If the her count dropped closer to the 10,000 range, then this would have been great news and might have meant that her high count from the previous week had been due to getting 3 immunizations and being sick for a few days.

When Dr. Kumar entered the room, we could tell that the results were not good; Myla's blood cell count had risen to 28,000. Plus, the abnormal cells were still present. Based on this, we decided to have a bone marrow test done because this is the only test that could tell us whether Myla had leukemia. I won't go into the details of the test because I'd rather forget about it, but after it was over, we headed for the recovery area and waited to hear the preliminary results.

After about an hour, Dr. Kumar came in to the recovery area and said that she would like to chat with us about the results in a private room. That's when we knew.

It took about 10 minutes, but we finally were moved into a "family counselling room" where we sat there and waited for Dr. Kumar to arrive. At one point, two nurses came in to take additional blood samples from Myla, and this wasn't too bad because she still had the IV port attached to her head (click here for a picture). Then we sat there, waiting


for what seemed like



forever.

I put my arm around Melissa, who was holding Myla, who was still hooked up to a heart monitor. We were surrounded by bookshelves full of scary titles such as "What to do when your child has cancer," "Coping with the loss of a family member," and "How to say 'goodbye' when Fido has leukemia." Those weren't the exact titles, but close enough. For the most part, I tried to ignore all of this. Somewhere down the hallway a child's screams made it through the doors between us. We continued to wait.

When Dr. Kumar entered the room, her nonverbals told the story. All that remained were the details. It turned out that Myla has Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

Melissa and I decided that it would be best to bring Raul Matthew in from the waiting room where he was playing with Melissa's parents. Considering the situation, I was fairly stable emotionally as I walked through the long waiting room to the corner where Raul Matthew was coloring on the floor, but by the time I got there, I could barely choke out the words for him to follow me. I wasn't about to explain everything that was going on to my in-laws at this time, so my son and I headed back to the counselling room leaving my in-laws wondering what had transpired.

What was said wasn't really important. Being there as a family was. After a time, the social worker assigned to us stopped by to introduce herself and give us a resource binder to help guide us through our upcoming adventure--my word, not hers.

Eventually we returned to the waiting area and shared the grim news with Melissa's parents. None of us where surprised by the diagnosis, so I guess that made dealing with things a bit easier, perhaps. With heavy hearts nonetheless, we headed for the top floor of the parking garage where we loaded up and we backed out.

Well, some of us backed out.

I, however, decided it would be more fun to back into a gigantic light pole with a concrete base as big as the Washington Monument. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but only a little bit. The pole and it's immovable base were perfectly in my blind spot and instead of hitting it directly, I shaved the back passenger-side of the car with the pole. This wouldn't have been so bad except that that pole caught the back wheel and broke the axle (click here for a picture of the carnage). Get it? Carnage? Never mind. Anyway, I pulled the car forward and knew immediately from the grinding noise of the wheel against underside of the car that this vehicle was going nowhere else today.

Somehow, I didn't care.

I just switched gears to the task of loading into my inlaw's Suburban for the ride to their house. Here's a picture of Myla looking exhausted after a day of testing. So instead of driving my family from the hospital as their fearless leader, I found myself bunched up in the back of a Suburban with my knees up around my head because of the high floor. Inspiring.

While at the Byroms (Melissa's parents), we shared the news with sister's family and finally headed home in a 17-foot long 1985 Ford Country Squire station wagon lent to us by the Byroms for our night-time return trip to Kokomo.