Scary Stuff

On Wednesday September 2nd 2009 at about 4:30am I am up and I had just finished nursing Alexia and putting her back in her crib when I hear Todd's phone get a text message. I thought to myself who in the world would be texting at this hour. I grab his phone and see that it is a text from Christopher (which was weird because he is just down a bit away from our room) so I read the text and it says "I feel sick, like really really bad". I go to wake up Todd and show him the text so he gets up and checks on Christopher he comes back to tell me that Christopher says he has a really bad headache and feels like vomiting. Todd ends up giving him some Tylenol and goes back to bed. The next day he stays home and off to our routine of going to work.

The end of the day I am getting ready to leave work when my sister calls and tells me my dad wanted us to go over for dinner. I call Todd and tell him about it and we decide to just meet at my parents. While we are there Todd says "I don't know what Christopher is going to eat I haven't checked on him." I was a bit confused as to why he would say he hadn't checked on him, I had totally forgotten that he didn't feel well. I tell Todd that he should call and check on him. He does and when he hangs up he tells me that Christopher said that he didn't feel well at all that he just didn't feel right. I tell Todd that he should take him to the doc but by this time the after hours clinic is closed. I suggest that he take him to urgent care (at this point I am thinking Swine Flu). He calls Christopher back and asks him if he feels bad enough to go to urgent care. He says no and so we leave it at that. We are still at my parents' house but Todd had to leave for an appointment so the girls and I just stayed with my parents.

Later after Todd's appointment he calls me and says that Christopher now wants to go to urgent care. So off they go and it is about 8:30pm or so. They get to the urgent care and Christopher says that his head hurts and that his neck and back are sore. The doc there decides that he might have Menigitis but they didn't have a way to check for it so he says they need to go to the ER. I freak out about this news because of the girls so I decide to just stay at my parents longer.

They get to the ER and they start asking questions by now the doctor wants to know how much of it was just drama and begins to tell Christopher that they will proceed with a spinal tap.....suddenly his neck and back aren't as sore. They do some blood test and realize that his white blood cell count is low. Todd calls me to tell me all this and I just find it odd. Why would his white blood cells be low if he is fighting off something? I could tell by Todd's tone that it could mean very bad news. LEUKEMIA! With his cell counts so low he had to be admitted to the hospital. I didn't know what to think!

Todd got home and I gathered up the girls and headed home at about 2:00am I couldn't sleep the rest of the night! We didn't go to work but I took the girls to daycare and Todd went to the hospital early and I met him there a bit later. The doc was going to come in at around lunch time to tell us what his counts are and what might be going on. The doc comes in and says that Christopher's white blood cell count is at 1 meaning 1000 per cubic mm of blood a normal range is anywhere between 5 and 10. No one with even just a sniffle could visit.

His counts continued to drop a bit so they had to take him off the fluids because it can dilute the blood. He continues to feel pretty sick and feel very weak. The doc said they think it is some sort of virus. The last test they would do would be for Leukemia and they just kept checking his counts.

Finally his counts are going up! He get released from the hospital on Friday night. His counts are at about 3 so he still had to stay away from the public. They gave him some anti-viral medications and had to get his blood checked every other day. He was able to go back to school on Wednesday the 9th but he still needs to get his blood checked. No one is still quite sure what happened but personally I think he caught some nasty bug because he never and I mean never washes his hands! If he wants to play with the girls he MUST wash his hands and I MUST see him doing it. Something like that could be fatal for our little girls! Maybe even someone Ellie's age (6). He had been doing a lot better but sometimes he says that he doesn't feel well and he gets headaches quite often. We are happy that he didn't get any worse and that he recovery is going well.