Our lives were completely transformed earlier this week. We made the decision to take Derrick to the ER Tuesday night because his cold wasn’t getting better — we’d been in and out of the pediatrician multiple times over the past few weeks and he just didn’t seem like himself Tuesday, enough to scare me. So off we went.
We initially were told it looked like pneumonia and anemia that night around 9pm, but we were transferred to a hospital with a top tier pediatric ER for further testing. We arrived around 1am. Fast forward to 10am or so Wednesday and the pediatric oncology team was at the foot of my bed talking to me about blast cells and a bunch of other stuff I’d never heard of. We now know he has leukemia.
He had his first surgery yesterday. Actually, the photo where we’re smiling was probably the best laugh we’ve had in a long time and maybe the only laugh this week. Just before surgery they gave him the ‘happy juice’ and he immediately looked at me and started giggling like a drunk man. It was precious. We needed that. Much of the rest of this week has been spent in tears or stunned silence, processing, learning, hoping and praying to some being out there somewhere to save my sweet boy.
We’re starting his chemotherapy today. It’s going to be a very hard time ahead, but we’re doing all we can do. There’s no other option than to jump into this with everything we’ve got and get this baby feeling better.
Asking that you please send hope and prayers in our direction. We’ve got an incredible community behind us and a ton of prayer and hope coming our way already. We will beat this.
