About August 30th 2004 Isabella began having a fever with a sore throat, I took her to the pediatrician and was told she had a virus, well needless to say the fever did not go away and she developed bellyaches. I took her back to the pediatrician and he had her blood work done and called us at 10:30pm to let us know that the blood work showed something was amiss but he did not know what, but that he was sure we could rule out Leukemia or other cancers!! I woke my husband in disbelief, I never knew they were considering such a thing. Well we ended up seeing a specialist in infectious disease and they thought she had mono and that is what was causing her enlarged spleen (weird to look back on all the obvious signs).
Well she continued to have the high fevers and then on Oct 10th she woke up with a lot of what we thought was groin pain (now we know it was bone pain). I took her back to the Dr and again was pretty much dismissed, I knew my daughter could not be faking this pain and limp. I began to think other people thought I was hurting my daughter, I truly thought I might be going nuts, except that my mom and immediate family could see that things were really so up and down. The groin pain went on for 1 week and then it was just gone as quick as it had come. Bella had a couple more good days and then the fever again. Again I took her to the Dr, but this time I saw a different Dr and she took one look at me and said, "Amy I trust you, if you believe something big is going on I believe you." and she ordered more blood work the following Monday.
Well that Monday afternoon the Dr office called me and said we needed to be admitted to Crouse Hospital right away, her blood work had come back worse than the first, but still the blood work did not detect Leukemia. 3 days at Crouse and a million tests including a full body scan and NOTHING!!!! Of course Isabella had no fever or leg pain while we were there. An oncologist did come speak to me and set up an appt for a bone marrow test on the following Mon (Oct 25th) but seemed reassuring that this was routine at this point. If we went the rest of the week fever and pain free we could skip it, but that we should know that in small children sometimes Leukemia does not show up in the blood but hides in the marrow for a while. We went home on Wed and had a great rest of the week, and I was convinced that whatever had been bugging my baby was finally gone. Except that on Sat morning she woke up with both the high fever and groin pain and, God, I knew in my heart, this was bad. Needless to say we took her to Upstate hospital had the bone marrow test done. We were taken to a private room in the very back of the clinic, and I just knew this is where the bad news would be delivered, and sure enough, we were told that Isabella had Leukemia.
I swear I will never forget the look on my husband’s face as he held our beautiful daughter only 1 week away from her 3rd birthday, we cried and held each other for a long time in that room. Isabella was admitted, an access port put in, chemo started and also a blood transfusion. Induction had begun.
Amy, mom to Isabella dx 10/25/04 also mom to Chris (16), Nicholas (11), Abigayle (8)