I'm Breathing A Huge Sigh Of Relief

Being a parent comes with worry. I know that all too well. I'm sure I will worry about my kids for the rest of my life, too. As they get older the worries will change, but they will still be there in some form, I imagine. The last month has been full of worries for me. It started with Rylie's tree nut allergy, then we had a few weeks of sickies with both kids, and last week we had a big scare with Rylie. I honestly couldn't even blog about this until now because I was so scared.

Last Thursday I took Rylie to her 3 year well check. Her pediatrician was concerned that she didn't gain much weight in the last year, and had actually lost a pound since she had been weighed there the week prior when we went in for a sick visit. I told her that she doesn't eat much (she pretty much would eat Fruit Loops and pears for every meal if I would let her), and has had problems with constipation. She explained that constipation was a vicious cycle for toddlers - they don't want to poop at school so they hold it, which stretches out their colon, so when they do finally go the poops are huge and hurts them, which makes them hold it even more. She said that Rylie was smart and probably knew that eating would make her poop, so she just doesn't want to eat much. We talked about giving her Miralax and ways to break this cycle.

During the exam I explained to the pediatrician that because I'm a blogger, and involved in a lot of various mom communities, I hear more about kids with cancer than most people do, so I tend to think the worst when weird stuff goes on with my kids. I really just told her that because I wanted her to talk me down from my craziness and tell me that I don't have to worry about that. But she didn't. She felt Rylie's belly and said it was definitely distended, then she felt her lymph nodes that have been enlarged since I can remember, and said that we needed to do some tests. She wanted to run some bloodwork that included sed rate, and said "I have never had a kid with a tumor that came back with a normal sed rate." I won't even go into detail about the horror that was getting Rylie's blood drawn, but it wasn't fun. I was told that the test would take an hour and they would call me.

I didn't get a call Thursday night, so I just chalked it up as "no news is good news" and put the worry out of my mind. Well, Friday morning I got the call that changed that. Her sed rate was elevated and the doc wanted her to have a CT of her abdomen and an xray. I'm sure by now you all know exactly where my mind went. I was literally hysterical when I told Brian. Yes, an elevated sed rate can mean many things, but since we had discussed cancer, and the pediatrician had made that comment that she made, that is immediately what I thought. Unfortunately they couldn't get Rylie in until yesterday for the tests, so I was a mess all weekend.

We headed to the hospital yesterday afternoon for the tests. Rylie wasn't allowed to have anything to eat or drink because of the possibility that she would have to be sedated. When we got there they had to give her an IV in order to administer the contrast for the CT. Poor kid. This was the third time in two weeks that she had to be poked, and I just felt so bad for her. I explained to the tech that I didn't think sedation would be necessary as long as I could stand with her, so they slapped a lead apron on me and she did just fine. I got nervous because they told me we couldn't leave the room until the doctor looked at the pictures, and then they shut the door while they discussed it. I wanted to cry right there, but somehow I managed to keep it together. The doctor came in and left and we were sent to xray where we repeated the whole lead vest and hold still procedure. I was told that the pediatrician would have the results within the hour. We left at around 2:00.

At 4:30 I still hadn't heard from the pediatrician so I called and left a message. At 5:00 the nurse called back and said they hadn't gotten the results and said she would call the hospital. She called back a few minutes later and said the hospital didn't have the results and then asked me if I minded waiting another day to get them. I'm surprised I didn't go totally ballistic on her, but of course the tears started flowing. I explained to her that I had already agonized over this long enough and I really needed to get the results. She called back again like 10 minutes later with the news I wanted to hear.

The results had not been approved yet, but she told me I had nothing to worry about. She said that the only finding on the images was that there was an excess of fecal matter, and after the doctor looked at everything tomorrow, she would probably have some orders for me. OK, I can deal with that.

I cannot even tell you all the thoughts that have gone through my mind over the past few days. The thought of my little girl having cancer was the scariest thing I have ever dealt with in my life. My heart goes out to any parent that has a child that has been diagnosed with something as horrible as that. It really does. Like I said, through blogging I hear about more of this than an average person does, and those parents and children are always in my thoughts.

I feel so bad for Rylie for all of this. The poor kid has been so much since Christmas between the allergy stuff, the sickies and now this. She still has another round of environmental allergy testing next week, too. I hope that will be the end of the medical procedures for a long time!