The First Week

I'm going to jump ahead of time now and try to sum up our first week in the hospital. In later posts I'm going to go back and write more about Ida's diagnose and treatment. For now I'll try to catch up a little bit so I be better able to update on her condition.

As I wrote, her symptoms came and went without a diagnose for a while, yet they worsened considerably last Sunday. She became stiff, just wanted to lie down, was pale and without apatite. She seemed almost apatic. We went into the hospital with her and after a couple of basic tests were sent home, and were being told it was probably just a virus infection.

The next day Ida got even worse. To the above mentioned symptoms pain in the bones and spine was added. She laid on her back, pulling her legs to her chest in obvious agony.

This time the medical team in the hospital realised there was something seriously wrong with the little thing. Blood tests were taken and analysed under a microscope. These test reviled abnormality in her white blood cells.

That was last Monday (August 4th). On Tuesday afternoon we were told that a bone marrow sample was necessary, to test for leukemia.

To take a sample of the bone marrow a needle is inserted into the spinal cord. It is called a spinal tap.

Ida had her first spinal tap on Wednesday. She had her second on Friday, during a different procedure. Spinal taps for small children are preformed under anesthesia.

On Wednesday it became clear that Ida suffers from leukemia. There are some different kinds of leukemia, Ida suffers from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) you can read about it here.

On Thursday we moved to children oncology unit, where Ida is going to get her treatment.

On Friday Ida went a second surgery in which a PAC was inserted under her collarbone (shown in the picture: the silver thing is inserted under the skin, the thin tube on the left is inserted in the main vain. In the center of the PAC there is silicon in which a needle can be inserted in order to take blood or give medicine, the see-through plastic tube attached to the needle remains outside the body), bone marrow was taken from her spine and Metotrexat was injected to her bone marrow (some chemotherapeutic drugs are ineffective when given in the blood and have to be injected direct to the bone marrow, more on that on later posts).

During the weekend her condition improved considerably. The colour was back in her face (partly thanks to a blood transfusion she received on Friday), she ate a little bit, started talking and bubbling again and even played and crawled a little. In the picture Ida is taking care of her dolls...

We hope for the best.