Owen – Pre-Diagnosis

Friday November 16 –

I am Owen’s Mom.  I will be telling the story of his battle against Leukemia.  It was a Friday night.  I went out with some girls from a MOMs Club that I am in to paint for a moms night out.  I came home and it was after 10 pm and Owen was still up.  He was in our bedroom and was complaining about his legs hurting.  We didn’t think too much of it, thinking that it might be growing pains, or that he just wanted to sleep with us.  He was up a lot through the night still complaining about the pain and didn’t sleep much.

Saturday, it was more of the same complaint.  He didn’t want to do much and we gave him Tylenol and it wasn’t getting any better.  He wouldn’t really walk too much, hardly even to go to the bathroom.  This was him for the majority of the day.

He felt hot on and off, but was only running a low grade fever.  I called the nurse hotline in the evening around 9 pm or so… she said to maybe try some Motrin since that is better for joint and muscle pain.  My husband, Jeff, ran to the store, got some Motrin and that seemed to temporarily help.  He slept better Saturday night.

Sunday morning, he woke up and said “I think I am better.”  Then, as soon as he went to stand out of bed, he couldn’t… He wanted carried everywhere.  He was running a fever on and off (and in hind sight it was most likely just being masked with the Motrin).  This continued throughout the day.  That evening, I told Jeff that I think we should take him to his Pediatrician’s Express Clinic.  I took him while Jeff stayed home with our younger son.  I feel fortunate that we had Owen’s normal Pediatrician Dr. Rowland.  He did the exam, and couldn’t find anything other than the fever of 101.  He said that he wanted us to go down to the Emergency Room at Children’s Hospital so that they could run some blood work.  He said it “is probably nothing”, but it was worrisome that he wouldn’t walk, and being 3 1/2, that is not normal for that amount of time.

I took Owen back to the house, we picked up Jeff and headed to the ED.  We got checked in and they drew some blood.  Then they came back and wanted to get some more blood…. didn’t think too much of that until the Doctor came back and had another Doctor with him.  He then told Jeff and I to sit down.  When hearing that, my stomach started to turn thinking this can not be good.  He started going to in to the explanation of what the blood tests showed with 3 types of abnormal cells.  And then he brought up Leukemia, and my heart dropped.  How could this be?  Just Friday morning he was playing and running and laughing and being the energetic little boy that he always is, and then this?

The other Doctor was there since she is a Fellow in the Oncology Division.  She went into further explanations and said that she reviewed the cells herself and was positive that it was Leukemia.  They said that Owen would be admitted that night and the whole process would begin tomorrow.