Scary Night!
Yesterday was a new and scary experience in this horrible cancer journey!
Sofia has been doing great recently. She had her lumbar puncture with chemo and steroid pulse last week. She handled it all like a champ! No tummy aches, no sadness and no throwing up! We are still staying low profile with all the cold and flu going around.
So I was very surprised when yesterday morning, Sofia woke up and felt warm to me. She said she felt great, was running around, eating and drinking, all with a low grade fever. At about 3:00pm her fever spiked to 101.4 which is an automatic trip to the ER. Again, she still feels good. So I'm confused and slightly nervous.
Stanford ER is great getting us back right away to one of the special rooms. Labs were drawn for bacteria cultures and for our standard blood tests. Then we just sat and played. We sat and sat! Eventually our nurse came in to tell us Sofia was not neutropenic so there was no need for antibiotics. I asked what her anc was and he said 8600! Now please remember that Sofia's anc has been living at 1200 for over 3 months and the highest it has ever been was 5000. When the nurse saw my surprise he started doubting the number so I asked for her white blood cell count so I could calculate. He told me her WBC count was 9.8 and I almost fell over. This number has always been either very low up to 2.8. The nurse was even surprised when he looked at her numbers from the past. He said, let me go talk to the doctor. Two hours went by! I kept asking what was going on and they kept saying they were waiting for oncology. We were having a million flash backs to waiting for hours in that same ER with a healthy little girl who had been getting fevers for no reason, with the night ending in a leukemia diagnosis.
Finally, 4 hours after our lab draw the resident came in and said we could go home but we needed to contact oncology first thing in the morning. I questioned the high WBC count and she said she couldn't speak to it. Another doctor came in and said we should get labs done again the following day and if the WBC goes down than it was her body just fighting something but if it continues to go up it could be a relapse, but only time will tell. I thought I was going to pass out!
So we left and I held my baby all night watching her sleep, praying to God that this wasn't happening.
Today we, not so patiently, waited to hear from her oncology team. Than I got an email from her NP that said "labs look fine, keep her hydrated and let us know if she spikes another fever." What?? I sent her another panicky email about no symptoms and the word relapse. She promised me that everything looked fine and that the number was probably high because Sofia's fighting something. I was still nervous! Than, the email from her oncologist came. He explained that though the WBC was high all of the cells were mature (leukemia is basically when you white blood is overtaken by baby, immature cells that don't work). He was very angry that anyone said the word relapse to us. He promised me, the labs were fine.
I read it, I took and deep breathe and I cried. I was happy and terrified of worrying about this for the rest of my life.
After calling Mike to tell him the news, I sat down with Sofia to talk to her about it. She knew I was nervous and I didn't want her to worry. I explained to her that I was nervous about her numbers last night but that her doctor said everything looks great. She jumped up and gave me a huge hug and said, mom, don't worry, I'm ok, I'm all healthy.
Oh, my heart.
So, we did as we always do and had a dance party. Noni now copies Sofia's moves and it's hilarious.
One day at a time!!!! [...]
