Diagnosed

December 23, 2010 - Day One

I didn't sleep all night and I don't feel well. The Dr. yesterday gave me tramidal (I guess that is how you spell it I called it damn it all) to help with the pain of my herneated disc in my back and it kept my mind racing all night. I am supposed to go to physical therepy today at 7, but I don't feel I can do it. Here, I face a dilemma. I can't find the card to the physical therapist, do I just not show up or do I get my butt out of bed and run over and tell her? I decide that I need to let her know so I head to Riverton Hospital and make my way to the fourth floor. After exiting the elevator, I swing by the bathroom and throw up, o.k. I warned I didn't feel too well, and I reschedule my appointment and head home.

The Dr. office called around 8:30 to say that my platelet were 4 and the Dr. wanted me to go the hospital and get platelets. 4? I think I actually chuckled a little. I call Jason on my way to the hospital and he meets me there. The hospital decides to run their own blood work and find that my platelet count is 5, not 4. Wow, an improvement. To give you an idea....a healthy person has between 150,000 to 400,000 platelets. I had 5,000. They also asked if my Dr. had mentioned that my red blood cells were low. Umm, no. I think it was about that point that they told me I would have to stay in the hospital. But, really. It can't be that serious, can it? What became an issue at that point was what hospital to send me to. The insurance company was closed and they didn't know what, if any, restrictions I had. I think I waited in the E.R. for about 3 hours while we worked to get this figured out. When I was finally able to tell him there were no restrictions, he said "Good, because you need to go to LDS. You have leukemia."

Leukemia?????  Seriously, at this point my mind did not register that this was cancer or life threatening. Leukemia was just a word to me, I was fine.

Maybe I should have had an idea how big of deal this was when I arrived at the hospital and several people said "You must be Jenny" and they had my room ready for me. Or when they installed a pic line. Or even when they took a core of bone marrow. But I must have been in denial. I thought I would only be in the hospital 4 or 5 days, which sucked because I would miss Christmas.