The Story about how Ariel got sick and after a lot of poking, got better

This is one of the few pictures I have from that first hospital stay after her diagnosis. My late sister Sarah flew out from Wisconsin to help out. Ariel was so excited to see her, and she really made a difference, joking and playing with Ariel while I got a chance to shower and eat something. By the way, if you ever have a friend who has a child in the hospital, the best thing to bring them is real food. It was my life-saver. In the first 48 hours the only thing I ate was crackers and bananas, until some really thoughtful friends brought me some great food. I hadn't even thought about food, being so overwhelmed by the diagnosis and all the procedures. Maybe I should start at the beginning.
I think it started in early October of 2005. My parents had come out from Wisconsin to visit and we drove down to Castle Dale to visit my grandma. While we were there Ariel got a fever. It went away and we never figure out why. Then at night her legs started aching so bad that she would wake up screaming from the pain. We just thought it was growing pains. Then Annika was born on October 18th. Soon after I came home from the hospital with Annika, Ariel started getting fevers again. They would come and go. Then she started feeling really miserable and looking really pale. I took her in to the doctors on a Tuesday and the pediatrician thought that it was probably strep throat. That didn't sound right to me, but he said that it can take up to 48 hours for a something to grow out of a strep culture. He said that if nothing showed up after 2 days than we might have to have some blood work done. At the time, that sounded really bad, and in my gut I felt like, this is not strep, lets get the blood work done right now because she was fading from me before my eyes. Everyday she was getting weaker. Her best friend had stopped by and she couldn't even get up off the couch to say hi to her. That was strange. But that was all before I knew that I should listen to my gut and demand the medical service that I believe she needs. So, after two days, we were sent to the outpatient lab to have her blood drawn. We stopped by McDonald's on the way home because I had promised her a Happy Meal if she let them draw the blood. Little did I know that it was only the first poke of hundreds to follow in the next few years. By the time we got back home, the lab already had the results and had the pediatrician call me at home to tell me over the phone that my daughter had Leukemia and that we needed to get back in the car and come back to the hospital ASAP.
I called my next door neighboor to tell her that we wouldn't be needing meals from the Relief Society any more (they were brining them because Annika was just born days before). She came over to help and I don't know what I would have done without her. I was running around the house trying to pack and making phone calls to Nikolay at work and my friend Olga who took Adriana and Annika. My neighbor actually drove us to the hospital in our car because I was such a wreck. Then she drove Nikolay's car home for us.We took this picture the day after she came home from the hospital the first time. I wanted to take our Christmas pictures while she still had hair.

To make a long story short, Ariel's treatment lasted 2 1/2 years. She had ALL and reached remission after the first month of treatment. For the first few months we went to the hospital once a week, and even more than that because other things would come up like her having allergic reactions to the chemotherapy and getting sick. Her immune system was really low for about the first two years, till one doctor recommended her switching from one preventative medicine to another, then her counts were only down right after her chemo and would come back up. We had a few hospital stays with neutropenia and we almost lost her a few times. And a few surgeries for placing her central line, removing her central line and placing a port and removing the port. So, she has 3 scars on her chest as a souvenir. There were lots of terrible side effects, but I can't complain now because she is healthy and a survivor!
One of the hard parts that taught me a lot more compassion was transitioning from normal life to hospital life and back again. There were times when we would come home from staying in the hospital, or a night in the ER, thankful that she was alive and someone would call me to ask about something trivial (which is almost everything compared to saving your child's life, again) and I wouldn't know how to react, like can't I just go to sleep and get back to the real world when I'm ready. It was hard for her friends and our friends and family to understand that yes, she is feeling fine today, but she really wasn't yesterday, and who knows what is going to happen tomorrow.
There were so many blessings and miracles along the way and so many people really reached out and helped us. We really felt loved and supported along the way. But we are so glad that it is over. I could write a lot more about some of the specifics of our different hospital adventures, and maybe I will in later posts.

When she was finally able to leave the house, we went to the zoo. You can see how chubby the steriods made her face.

This is a cute shot of my cute bald girl. It didn't seem to bother her a lot and she would take her hat off in public a lot to get a reaction out of people.

On another note, we are leaving tomorrow to visit the Miners in MA, and are so excited, so this concludes my November NaBloPoMo challenge. See you in December!