DAY ONE (January 7, 2016)

Tash had what I would consider a great night, last night, he ate and seemed to rest comfortably.  A night that resembled a “normal" night in our house before our life was flipped upside down….except here he is in a hospital bed, with monitors running, fluids being pumped into his body and nurses in and out checking on him. If I close my eyes for a minute maybe I can pretend like we are back home.

Today is Day One of treatment. Words I never thought I would be using to describe the life of one of my children. Dr. Gruber (his primary doctor at St. Jude) confirmed the diagnosis from FL Hospital yesterday afternoon, Infant Leukemia, B-Cell ALL. Honestly, there was a part of me (a large part of me) that was still holding out hope that we were mis-diagnosed in Florida. I just couldn’t understand how this could happen to such a tiny person. He is just a BABY...a brand new BABY....MY BABY….but I have learned first hand cancer does not care about age, gender, if you are a good person or a bad one. It is savage and we will fight it.

I kept going back to his initial blood counts in FL. His blood count had changed so drastically while we were at FL Hospital, were they sure this leukemia?? Did the pathologist read the blood count wrong?? How could it go from 125,000 WBC to 17,000 (a much more "normal" number) just by pushing fluids....I didn't know it at the time but it wasn't abnormal for the counts to swing like that. I kept thinking its just a serious virus and it was a fluke blood result. This SERIOUSLY could not be happening to my sweet boy. I wanted more proof that this was really happening. I don't know what more proof looked like but its what I wanted. Yet another part of me was scared that if it wasn’t leukemia - WHAT was it? Would they fly us back to Orlando?? How many more tests would he need?? What if it was something worse than leukemia?? Which oddly enough was even a bit more worrisome. But that’s another story for another day. Today is Day One. 

#TASHTUFF