Reflective

Yesterday was one of the scariest times of my parenting life. Ben woke up in the morning with petechiae on his body.  For those of you who don't know, petechiae are little pin prick sized red/purple dots that show up under the surface of the skin.  In the world of pediatric medicine, they are commonly the first sign that a child has leukemia.  After I checked with Muddy to confirm she saw them too, I called the pediatrician with my heart in my throat.  The nurse said she would talk to Dr. Scott and then call us back. So we waited...then she called back and said that the doc wanted to see Ben in the afternoon. In the meantime I was researching it to the ends of the Earth and found that petechiae show as a viral thing or the other.  So I  had everything crossed that it was some weird viral thing left over from his rash from last week.

When I took him in, Dr. Scott said there was no doubt that it was petechiae (which made me feel better and not like the neurotic mother).  She said she thought he was fine, but wanted to have blood work done to be sure.  She assured me, if she thought it was leukemia she would have sent us to the ER, not to the lab. So off to the lab we went.  The results were ordered  "stat" which means they are done within the hour.

After an hour I called the office and was told the doctor was with a patient and would call us with the results as soon as she was out.  Three hours later, which may have been the longest three hours of my life, she called to say all of his lab results were gloriously high.  

We're still waiting on the mono results, but she thinks those'll be negative too. 

She thinks he's got an enirovirus (not sure how it's spelled, but it means "summer virus.") which we do nothing for.

So, in closing, I just want to express how grateful and blessed I feel that I have two healthy children.  Now I can say I know what that wait is like for parents who aren't sure if their child has something as horrible as childhood cancer. It was not a pleasant experience to say the least. I feel like we dodged a bullet somehow and I feel like I have a new lease on life. We're really lucky.