Diagnosis is in – she has Leukemia

This is the Day 2 post of my baby, Serenity, being diagnosed with Leukemia.  Day 1 is here. 

It’s been a Bad news, Good news kind of day. 

The bad news – our baby has Cancer.  The good news – she’s most likely not going to die.

The bad news – she’s looking at 2 1/2 years of treatments.  The good news – she’ll most likely be around to have them all.

The bad news – she starts chemo-therapy tomorrow.  The good news – her type of Leukemia can be treated as an outpatient.

The bad news – she’ll be in the hospital for 7 more days.  The good news – after that she should be pretty much back to her old self.

The bad news – she has to have blood drawn and intra-venous treatments a LOT over the next 2 years.  The good news – she’s going to have a port catheter installed tomorrow so no needles after that!

The bad news – she has A.L.L. Leukemia (which has an 80-90% remission rate).  The good news – she doesn’t have A.M.L. Leukemia which can kill in 24 hours to 90 days and has low success rate for treatment.

You know what?  It really sucks having to accept the fact that your baby has cancer.  But once that’s done, there are silver-linings to that dark, dark cloud.  It makes a HUGE difference just KNOWING.  I was a total wreck the first 24 hours, now that we know what it is and what the chances and options are, we’re able to build action plans.  I’ll tell you what, after the last 24 hours, it’s REALLY exciting to make plans for Serenity that are 2 and a half years down the road.  Making those plans for her means that hopefully she’ll still be with us.  It means we can fight this thing, we can start strategizing and making battle plans to wage this war. 

It feels kind of like a startup company, which I’ve been doing for the last 18 months anyway, it’s familiar territory and I feel kind of comfortable here.  Just like a startup, Serenity’s plan involves risk – a lot of risk.  But there’s a huge reward and it’s very much worth time, effort and money.  Going into this we have no idea how much money it’s going to cost but it’s got to be done and we’ll figure that out as we go – just like an early stage startup.  The point is, I feel like I can do this, I’ve been doing it for a long time. 

Tomorrow marks the begining, everything so far has been about stabilizing her and getting her blood straightened out.  All her counts are much, much better.  We’ve been working with her potasium levels today.  They were the last thing that was really out of wack.  Now her blood (after two transfusions and 2 bags of platelletes) is pretty low, but it’s within functional and operatable ranges. 

She was feeling a bit better today, she played baloon bounce with me and actually laughed for about 5 minutes.  Then her burst of energy gave out, she laid down and went to sleep for several hours.  She played around a bit more and then crashed.  They tell us that once she adjusts to the chemo and steroids that she’ll be her normal self pretty quickly.  That’s very exciting to me – Serenity has been my little tag-along buddy for the last year.  She is VERY much a Daddy’s girl and does most of the things that I do, especially if it’s around the house or in the mountain.  She’s my little buddy and traveling companion and I can’t wait to get her back out in the mountains where she is happy beyond belief.  As I’ve sat with her here in the hospital, not knowing what she had or what her chances were, I reveled in knowing that in her short time with us this far, she has been very happy and has had some wonderful experiences.  Now that we know she will very likely get plenty of time with us still, I plan to make sure that that happiness continues.  I think I’m going to plan a wellness party for her up in the mountains, next to a big river where she’ll run and laugh and just love being alive.  I think we’ll do that for sure as soon as she is up to it. 

I’ve been working on this post most of the day, things are very busy here and there are lots of interuptions – many of them welcome.  Several friends and family have been up to visit us and it’s been nice seeing them.  Thanks to all those who have expressed love by either coming up, sending messages or commenting on the last blog post.  We really do appreciate the love and support we’ve been receiving.  I took a few videos of Serenity playing around today but I can’t upload them to YouTube, I think they must be blocking uploading or something.  By the way, Primary Childrens Hospital has free wifi available and we’ve really appreciated being logged on most of the day. 

I’ll be posting more updates tomorrow after she has been to surgery.

UPDATE: Day 3 is here.