Nosebleed

Written Wednesday, March 7th:

Did you know a nosebleed will send you to Primary Children's Hospital? I didn't either, until JP had one that only lasted just 15 minutes today.

At 8:00 this morning JP was sleeping next to me in my bed (he occasionally crawls in around 5:00 or 6:00) and he puts his hand on my face and whispers, "Mommy! Mine buggars!" I look at his nose, don't see anything, and use my shirt to "wipe" his nose so he'll feel better. I pretend to go back to sleep. A couple minutes later he says, "Mommy! Mine buggars!" I, again, don't see anything but decide to get out of bed and grab some Kleenex in case he didn't believe my shirt was good enough. When I get back to the bed, I notice it's not a runny nose, it's bleeding. My heart sinks. Normally a bloody nose wouldn't alarm me - Josh frequently gets them so I used to think nothing of them and JP had four nosebleeds in two weeks leading up to his diagnosis - but knowing JP's platelet levels are extremely low I knew his blood isn't able to clot itself to stop the bleeding. I immediately call Josh and ask if he thinks we should call the doctor. He decides to come home from work. I think that's a little silly, I think I can stop a nosebleed, but whatever. After trying nicely to get JP to let me pinch his nose for 5 minutes, I literally had to hold him down so I could pinch his nose for the next 10 minutes. Enter the roid rage. Oh boy, was it ever! Screaming, kicking, hitting, you name it. I've never seen him so mad. I try to explain to him that it will not stop unless he calms down and lets me, but let's face it, he's two. It's hard to understand why Mommy won't let you breath out of your nose and why the heck is it bleeding. I tried counting out loud because JP really likes counting and I thought maybe he'd join in, but once I reached a million he was still yelling at me. Sigh. It did finally stop and he did finally calm down and we spent the next 20 minutes sitting in silence hugging each other while I rocked him. I know it's the medication that's making him so crazy and I was very content to just hold him close so he knew I really was just trying to help. Once Josh was home the doctor called back and told us to come in, they wanted to check his levels and do another platelet transfusion. Thank goodness he decided to come home so I had some help quickly getting everybody ready to get to the hospital.

We spent almost 4 hours being checked and receiving the transfusion. His platelet level was at 20,000 (remember that normal is 150,000) which was actually up from the 13,000 it was last Friday but it's still extremely low. While we were having the transfusion, Dr. Staddon stopped by to give us some bad news. JP's blood smear was still showing leukemia cells. Apparently that is abnormal for the stage we're at in induction so he thinks we'll be at least 2-4 weeks longer before moving into remission than originally planned. Not great news, but he still thinks we'll see remission relatively soon. I'd love to be in remission on Day 29 but it looks like it will be more like Day 43 or later. The craziest part about this cancer is that JP will technically be in remission for about 3 years of treatment. Once a week/once every 10 days for at least 3 years we will be doing chemotherapy on a boy that no longer has evidence of leukemia cells in his blood. It takes that long to make sure we get them all. It only takes one tiny cell to go wacko so we need to make sure we get everything. I still feel unbelievably grateful it is the type of cancer it is. This is one small bump in the road, I expect there to be many along this journey, but we still feel calm about the process.

I find myself discounting how serious the situation is sometimes. When JP was in the hospital, Josh and I were coming back up to his room after getting something to eat. We shared the elevator ride with a visibly distraught man. When he got off on his floor, he grabbed the closest nurse and said, "Which way to the NICU? My son was just brought in on Life Flight. Please!" I choked up and couldn't hold back tears thinking how this father must be feeling - terrified, lost, and unsure about the health of his son. I looked at Josh, told him how heartbreaking that is and then he helped me remember that our son is fighting cancer. Oh yeah. Then today I shared an elevator ride with another patient's mother. We were both going to the 4th floor so the odds were 50-50 that she also had a kid in the ICS (immuno compromised unit). I asked how her child was doing, she said she had a 13 month old with RSV. I told her, "Wow, that is scary! I hope she gets better soon!" She said, "Yeah it is, what's your child have?" I paused and said, "Leukemia..." and let the word sort of just trail off, realizing how stupid I must sound. She looked at me and said, "That's much worse..." I didn't know what to say. I couldn't tell her that I don't think it is - I know he's going to be okay. My thoughts were that if her daughter was sick enough with RSV to be admitted to Primary Children's Hospital, it must be pretty bad. I sometimes just forget how sick JP is because he acts so normal most of the time. Maybe I'm still in denial. I don't think I am - I actually think I'm so far into the acceptance stage because I know he's going to beat this. I just don't know how long it's going to take.