Since our good news last week I've been feeling a bit strange. I can't really put my finger on why, but I've been really emotional and weepy all weekend, which is strange because I thought I'd be happy now that we are about to start treatment after all the time we've been waiting.
AF decided to show up a couple of days early on Sunday (wasn't due until Tuesday) which was a surprise, but it doesn't really matter much anyway because it just means my next cycle will start earlier and *hopefully* we'll be ready to start IUI then.
I went on Tuesday afternoon for my AMH bloods to be taken, and when I arrived the nurse said I'd have to come back to have another set done. When I asked which ones, she said day 1-3 bloods, but as it turns out I was on day 3 so she did those then too!! Pleased about that as a) one less time to be a pin cushion and b) we'll have all the results we need sooner meaning less chance of the start of IUI being delayed. Now it's just a case of waiting on the letter from the FC to arrive and see what happens next.
**Very Sensitive**
On Wednesday night I got a telephone call from Mum to tell me some bad news. My cousins little boy had been falling a lot, so his mum took him to the Doctor on Wednesday to find out why. They took some bloods, and within twenty minutes of them leaving the surgery they called her to tell her to go straight to Yorkhill with him (Yorkhill is the major children's hospital in the West of Scotland) To cut a long story short, it turns out that he has Leukemia and last night we found out that it's full blown adult leukemia rather than the more common childhood leukemia. He's been put into isolation and is going to theatre today to have a central line placed for all of the medication he's going to need.
I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I work in the Histocompatibility and Immunogentics Laboratory in a hospital (we're one of only two of these labs in Scotland) The main parts of our work are dealing with the the tissue typing for renal (kidney) and bone marrow transplants. Due to this, I know a little more about leukemia, and for a child to have adult leukemia is not common, in fact I've not seen any in the six and a half years I've worked there. That in itself is not a good thing, as the chances of recovering from it are not very good at all. While I was speaking to mum last night she said that his parents have been told there is a 90% chance of him not leaving the hospital.
How to you even start to deal with the fact that your two year old child is so sick, let alone that you've been told that chances are he's going to die? I've spent the last two years stressing about us not being able to get pregnant and thinking how unfair life is - but facing your two year old dying really is unfair. How can it be that someone is given a baby to love, only for it to be potentially snatched away from them two years later?
I have to say that all that's happened the last few days has raised a lot of concerns for me about having a baby. I still would love to have a child of my own, but how do you continue to live if that child is so cruelly taken away from you? My husband's brother died when he was 19 years old, he had been ill with heart problems as a child but had been well for years then just suddenly dropped dead in the street when he was out with his friends. It's been 20 years since Patrick died, but every day my mother-in-law still wakes up and has to deal with the fact that her child is gone and will never come back. Every day it chips another piece of her heart away, and every birthday, anniversary and Christmas she still feels the pain of losing him as much as they day he died. How to go you go living after your child dies?
Back to Ryan, and now that he's in isolation he'll be given chemo to kill of any remaining white blood cells in preparation for him to have a bone marrow transplant. His brothers will be tested first to see if they are a match (they're only 7 and 10 so even that is traumatic for them) and if they are then they'll donate bone marrow to their brother to try and save his life. If not, the testing will move out to the immediate family, and if a match still isn't found then the wider family (including me) will be tested to. I just hope one of us is a match for him as finding a match through the donor registries is totally hit and miss, and without a transplant I don't think he'll have any chance of getting better.
If anyone actually reads my blog, please keep Ryan in your thoughts and prayers as he needs all the help he can possibly get.
S x
No comments:
Post a Comment