Boo hoo.  Life has been dragging me down. 

My husband has been having a problem with recurring fevers for a year and a half.  The fevers go up for a week or two, then back to normal for a week or two, up, down, up down, for several months.  Then they disappear.  The fevers come with night sweats and weight loss.  He's seen a dozen doctors including all kinds of specialists, most dismiss him after the first round of tests.  But he found one doctor, thank God, who is paying close attention in more ways than one.  Dr. K was the only one who noticed that, although J's iron was back to normal after a bout with anemia, it was normal for most people.  Turns out what's normal for most people is not normal for J, and his iron had not returned to his own normal level.  After prescribing an iron supplement which didn't work, Dr. K realized that J's anemia is not due to iron deficiency; J has chronic disease anemia which is very different.

Then came the blow.  Fever, of course, is a symptom of just about everything.  I could not for the life of me find anything about recurring fever, or fever combined with night sweats.  Then last week one of J's blood tests showed enlarged lymphocytes.  This led me to read about leukemia, and something called "B symptoms".  What the heck are "B symptoms"?  Well, turns out they are fever, night sweats, and weight loss, and they are classic symptoms of lymphoma.  The article further described something called "Pel-Ebstein" fever, which - yup - goes up and down in 1-2 week cycles.  I nearly shit a brick.  On one hand, oh my God, cancer.  On the other hand, a potential diagnosis, and a highly treatable cancer with a very high survival rate. Dr. K is also unbelievably good at returning phone calls and answering questions. He pointed out that half the doctors in Maryland have been looking at J's blood, and none have seen evidence of lymphoma.  He won't rule it out, but it's not high on his list.

We had another event last week.  My daughters' friend at school was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL).  My first reaction was fear for my daughters, they are unbelievably sensitive.  They still cry over the loss of our old dogs, I hope to God they won't have to experience the death of a friend at this age.  Luckily, ALL has a good prognosis.  Until...last weekend we found out that she has a rare kind of ALL, called Philadelphia Positive (Ph+).  The Ph+ ALL prognosis has been described as very poor to dismal.  One option is bone marrow transplant, but it's very hard to find a donor, and even with a match the risks are very high.  Now I find it's not just my daughters I fear for.  I like this family.  My motto is "I don't like other peoples' kids", but the first time I met R she impressed me because she was kind to my kids.  I found her mother C and told her so, and I like C too.  Does that matter?  It's not like I would wish something like this on anyone else's family.  But it just seems too close to home.  Maybe because it's my kids' friend, maybe because this is going down at the same time I learned about the B symptoms and I've just reached an emotional overload. 

I heard that R's parents had to choose among experimental treatments.  I found a doctor in Canada who authored a paper about Ph+ ALL treatment options, and wrote him to ask for advice.  It blew me away, but he actually wrote back, and quickly!  It looked like gibberish at first, but I looked some of the things up.  Basically he recommends a newer tyrosine kinase inhibitor called Dasatinib.  I say that like I know what the hell it means!  I'm learning.  But the important thing is that there has been significant progress in just the last 5 years.  I'm not much of a prayer, but I pray R will be ok.

And my J.