The Beginning

It started last week when Sarah felt poorly, but not so bad that she was unable to work or function. She had been pale and weak on occasion and had continued normal activities including helping her parents move boxes. We did notice that she bruised rather easily and was often just not her normal energetic self.

On Tuesday morning she was unable to catch her breath, her heart was pumping extra hard, and she had no energy at all so I determined we would visit the Emergency Room that morning. They began by taking blood and started running tests. At first we thought it was either anemia or some reaction to some new meds she was on, but soon they informed us that her cell count (red, white, and platelet) was abnormally low and would begin transfusions immediately. She began to feel better after they gave her 4 units of blood and now they could start looking for why the count was so off.

They first looked at possible bleeding, but found nothing out of the ordinary that would explain her status. So they felt it was either lack of creating new blood cells or an autoimmune problem where new cells were being attacked as foreign matter. Because her condition was unknown she was admitted to the hospital for overnight observation on Tuesday. Blood work was run every 4 hours, which became a clotting/bruising problem due to low platelet counts.

To learn if new cells were being made they needed a bone marrow biopsy which began on Wednesday morning when the first two attempts for marrow came up dry. The third attempt was to extract core material, but this was excruciatingly painful and halted immediately. The biopsy was rescheduled for Thursday morning using same-day surgery. The procedure on Thursday resulted in one dry marrow tap so again a core sample was extracted. The core sample was insufficient so they did two to ensure they had enough material for testing.

Sarah was sent home to rest and was doing so when a call from the Oncologist came at 2pm to come to the office immediately. Sarah's parents were in town at the time and they came with us to the meeting. It didn't take long and the doctor broke the news that she definitely had Leukemia. Which type was still not pinpointed but she was to be admitted to the hospital again as soon as possible.

After further testing was done on Friday and Saturday, the lab was able to identify that she had Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia. The Oncologist indicated that of all the various types of leukemia this one is dangerously aggressive but also treatable with a high success rate of remission and cure.