The Diagnosis

I went in the afternoon of Dec. 31st to the Humboldt hospital where they drew the blood, I felt like passing out, and then my mother and I waited. Since she's a registered nurse, she went and sat behind the nurse's desk to talk to some colleagues. The form containing my blood count information passed in front of her and so she glanced at it. She took one look and knew something was very wrong. My platelet count was at 0, my hemoglobin was 66, and my white blood count was at 3. The doctor spoke to my mom privately and asked if we had gas in our tank because we needed to go to the hospital in the city, NOW, which was 110 km away.

Mom tried calmly to explain to me that we had to go to the hospital in Saskatoon and I should pack a few things because we might be there for a few nights. When I got home I grabbed the essentials and asked her if I could have a shower before we left since I didn't know how long it would be before I had my next one. (She told me later that she was so anxious to let me but since she didn't want to alarm me, she let me do it.) We called my father to let him know what was happening since he was at work and so he made his way home while mom and I took off. Mom must have been somewhere else in her mind because she started doing 145 km/h in our old minivan in the middle of winter and I thought if things were serious, I'd die before I even got to the hospital with her behind the wheel. It was -35°C so my dad followed behind us in his truck just in case anything were to happen.

I was given a room in emergency right away and a procession of nurses came by to take my blood one after another. After the 9th or 10th needle someone finally came to start an IV for me. I was so proud of myself for not passing out I made my mom take a picture for me to send to my brother.

Some doctors came and went and ordered more tests: an ECG, an X-ray and more blood into various bottles and vials. My parents left the hospital around midnight and I was given a ride in a wheelchair to my bed on the oncology ward around 3:30 a.m. The bed had a mattress that filled up with air every so often so that a bedridden patient wouldn't remain in one place too long, and it kept me awake all night. I was scared, I was alone, I hadn't slept a wink, I knew I was on the cancer floor and my breakfast that morning was an omelette that tasted like warm soggy cardboard. The next day was just another day full of needle pokes since my IV was now hooked to either a bag of platelets or blood. By the end of that second day I had received 22 needle pokes in 14 hours, meaning I had gotten over my phobia very quickly! In the late afternoon a doctor came into the room and told me I would be getting a bone marrow biopsy done the next morning for diagnostic purposes and I would need to be awake while they took their samples of marrow and bone. Well he might as well have told me I was going to die because I cried and I shook and cowered the entire night before the procedure like they were going to cut me open with an axe.

At 8:30 a.m sharp a doctor and a resident doctor came into the room rolling a cart that held the equipment to drill into my hip bone. I started to cry and asked them that I get morphine to dull the pain. They said I was going to get Versed to help me forget, and Ativan to help me relax. The nurse that day must have either been very new or very busy because while he administered the Ativan, he forgot about the Versed and left it on top of my IV pump. Due to his mistake I remember the biopsy all too well and the feeling of the needle hitting my bone to freeze the surrounding area. I also vividly remember the pressure I felt as they drilled and then the pain as they pushed through the bone and into the marrow. They began to try and aspirate some marrow but to the surprise of the resident doctor who was performing the biopsy, he could not find any. My mom knew the implications of the hushed and quickly exchanged words between the doctors and she excused herself from the room and went to go throw up. The doctors changed the angle and drilled a second hole nearby and were able to get some fluid and a bone sample. They showed it to me afterwards and I was surprised to see how small it was. The biopsy was all said and done, and it had only taken about 15 minutes. All the hours spent crying and shaking the night before was 90% fear and just like that, it was over in a matter of minutes.

It took a few days for the results to come back and when the doctor came to tell me the news, he had nothing to tell. They were not able to find any of the cells they needed in the sample they took.

They needed to do another biopsy.

The second biopsy turned out to be much better than the first! I was given both drugs which means I don't remember anything from that morning, and they managed to get enough of a sample to get me a diagnosis!

The two biopsy sites where I still have two little scars that are sensitive to changing weather.

This is the point where things started looking up for me. Upon my entrance in the hospital they suspected that it was bone cancer and my mother had mentioned that bone cancer is a very painful cancer that is hard to treat. With my new diagnosis, Severe Aplastic Anemia, it was almost a relief to hear since it didn't contain that dreaded "c" word.

For those who don't know what aplastic anemia is, a brief and thorough summary can be found here where the professionals can explain it much better than I can.

Now that they had a definitive diagnosis they could begin treating it, and that was good news!