When It All Started
In Mid-December he woke up one night with severe pain in his abdomen. I knew there was something wrong, but he had inconsolable crying and pain. We took him to his pediatrician and were then referred to the local hospital for appendicitis. After numerous tests they ruled that out and we went home after 3 days there. Now you must understand, Emilio has never been sick, not even an earache so I was startled by all of this. The night we were released he had inconsolable pain again. So, then we were referred Hope Christ Hospital which is a children's hospital and they did more testing. Thru out the whole time, his hemoglobin kept dropping and he became anemic. It made him tired and a little pale, and irritable. Emilio was sent home in December with out knowing what was wrong. Christmas came and went and he still went to have lab testing done to watch his hemoglobin. Then in early January he went to a doctor called a hematologist, they found some very abnormal cells in his blood. Being that I (mom) is a medical technologist, I knew already with the findings in the peripheral blood what was going on. My heart ached. Emilio had to return for a bone marrow, which would be diagnostic for Leukemia. The doctors told us about one hour later that my son had cancer. Emilio was put in the hospital and started chemotherapy . That is a treatment with drugs that will kill all the cancer cells in his body. Sometimes the chemo makes him very sick because it kills the good cells and the bad cells. He also had surgery for a central line catheter, called a port. This is a line in a major vein near his heart to which the doctors and nurses have access to. He will be able to receive medicine, chemotherapy and transfusions in it. They won't have to poke him so much with this port.