Quite A Scare

Well our 2 month off treatment appointment did not go as smoothly as I had anticipated. To backtrack... at Catherine's one month appointment her platelets were 135,000, below normal which is 150,000 - 450,000. This was a drop from 215,000 the day she finished treatment. A bit scary, but Dr. Farzana assured me that all was well and we perhaps caught her platelets on a down cycle. All her other counts were great - ANC 2100 and HGB 12.0 (for the first time in over 2 years she wasn't anemic!). As Dave and I have said earlier, her energy has been great and it's been a joy to watch what she is like without all the chemo. Get her counts back on Monday and her ANC was fantastic - 2800 with her HGB at 12.6. Her platelets were another story at 116,000. MJ, the Nurse practitioner and Dr. Joe were asking me if she has been sick lately (no). With no obvious answer to why her platelets are so low, Dr. Joe said he needed to eliminate the possibility that she has relapsed and said we needed to come in the next day for a bone marrow aspirate. This was just like punch in the stomach. I just started crying and Amy (the social worker) and Renie (one of the nurses) took me behind closed doors to let me cry and to let me know that this kind of thing is normal. Just last week they had a patient who was sick and weak, all her counts were low - tell-tale signs of relapse - and she was fine, just a nasty virus.
The rest of the day was simply horrible. Catherine kept asking me why I was crying and I tried to stay as far from the kids as I could. Dave took yesterday off and we went as a family to Guilford. I felt horrible that Catherine just had her port out and they had to draw blood from her vein which was no fun. Long story short, Dr, Joe doesn't see any cancer cells on the slides. The sample is still being tested for any chromosomal abnormalities and the maturity of her B cells (the ones that were cancerous). We are praying that that all comes back fine. So why are her platelets so low? She either has a virus (our bodies are always fighting off something and oftentimes viruses are in there wreaking havoc on all our cells including the platelets) or she may be someone who naturally has low platelets. We just don't know. Dave and I both agreed last night that this experience was almost worse than the day of her diagnosis...probably because we understand this disease so much more and it is frightening. I actually threw up last night from all of the angst and worry. It has also planted that extra seed of worry inside of me. She has been doing so great and it has had me thinking that we have probably conquered her leukemia. This scare has made me realize that we still have a long way to go and to not get too comfortable yet. So I ask that you all continue to keep Catherine in your prayers - she has been through too much and I just want her to be a normal kid and stay cancer free forever.