By Mommy:This is copied from my notes on my fb page. I don't really want to make my facebook page public, so I am creating a blog so others can read about Tyson's experiences, and so that I can have a record of it all in one place, this entry was written on facebook Sunday night, the 24th while we were in the ICS at Primary Children's Medical Center: This is to answer the question of how I knew something was wrong and how I found out. Keep in mind that I didn't put this puzzle together until he was diagnosed. After the diagnosis I started to think about the last couple of months and things made sense and fit into the symptoms of A.L.L. Leukemia that I hadn't even thought much of when they were presenting themselves. Several weeks ago, like February Tyson started to gradually be more tired during the day. He started tumbling in January and at first LOVED it and was so cute and did everything he was supposed to do and had a lot of fun. Then he gradually started to lose interest, laying around and being naughty when he was supposed to be doing cartwheels and rolls and stuff. I just figured he was following the lead of a couple of other kids who are like that in that class. At the same time he started falling asleep during Sacrament meeting (church) and started to be more clingy and not as active...again didn't think much of it. Those symptoms could be attributed to a lot of things...like being three for instance. Probably three or four weeks ago he told me his legs hurt and sometimes would make me carry him down the stairs and stuff. That only lasted a few days and I again attributed it to his being three. I remember telling Brady about it on skype one night and when he asked if I was going to take him to the doctor I laughed and said what is the doctor going to say? What they say every time right? that they are fine and here's your bill. :) A couple of weeks ago he started to go pale and was tired and grumpy a lot. He crawled up on my lap and snuggled a lot. He didn't eat much and I figured he had something and would get over it soon. He didn't have a fever so I wasn't even thinking about taking him to the doc...It was a long winter filled with lots of bugs goin around and we had our fair share of them. He continued to get paler though, and more tired... last Sunday we went to my parents house for dinner and people kept commenting on his paleness, he was so pale by then that his skin looked almost yellow. My sister started looking up 'yellow skin' on the internet and crazy stuff like hepatitis was the only thing popping up. I was a little concerned by then and Merin had a doctor appointment on Wednesday so I figured I would have the doc look at him. Tuesday night Emily got the stomache flu and so I had to cancel Merin's appointment. By Wednesday night Tyson was so pale that there wasn't any pink left anywhere, not in his cheeks, not on his earlobes, he looked wierd...and he had hit his knee on a metal vacuum a week and half earlier and it was not getting better so I thought well ok, I'll just run him over to urgent care and have them xray the knee and see if the skin is something I should be concerned about. The PA there was awesome, very attentive, asked lots of questions, xrayed his knee (it was fine) and took some blood to send to the lab. He didn't seem super concerned, just said there were a few things it could be so it would be a good idea to test. They pulled the blood, sent it to the lab at the hospital. When the labs came in that night like at 930 or 10 the ER doc called and asked if Tyson was ok, he seemed concerned and said the initial results of the lab show that Tyson was VERY anemic and that I should have him see our family doc in the morning. He said that means either something is destroying red blood cells, or that something was preventing them from being made and we needed to find out why. I hung up the phone and googled it and sure enough pale skin was right there in symptoms of anemia. The ER doc called back about an hour later and said the final results of the lab showed that his red blood cell count was very low, that his platelets were low, basically everything was extremely low exept a certain type of white blood cells called lymphocytes. He also said he didn't want to alarm me, but that I needed to not only get into my doc in the morning but that I should repeat the lab and probably needed to go to Primary Children's to have his marrow tested. I was alarmed, I had heard enough about blood cells in the past to know that this wasn't good...googled low RBC count high lymphocyte, sure enough Leukemia popped up. In the morning, Dr Burton who we love, on the verge of tears as he read over the labs confirmed what I worried about all night. He literally said, 'this is very bad, it looks a lot like leukemia, you need to go to Primary childrens today and have his marrow tested. He also said its time to call on whatever help you can get, get blessings, etc. I appreciated his frankness and honesty, there is nothing worse than not knowing,,,and by then I knew, even though there was no official diagnosis yet. He told me to go repeat the labs (yes Tyson more pokys sorry :( ) to make sure there wasn't an error. Aaaaand this is to be continued cuz it's 1:00 in the morning and Tyson finally went to sleep an hour ago so I better get some sleep before his meds wear off and the angry bear emerges. nite :)
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