Numb

In the ambulance on the way to the Children’s Hospital the lady EMT spent the whole ride trying to keep me occupied with idol chit chat, I think she could see by the look in my face that nothing was clicking for me and she just wanted to distract me while she had the ability to. As she was telling me about her failed dating history I spent the majority of the time watching Ryan sleep in his car seat strapped to the gurney with my mind spinning wondering what our lives would be like the moment the doors opened, just knowing that nothing would never be the same. Dan met up with in the ambulance bay as we were heading into the back entrance to the hospital. It felt like every single thing was whirling by us and we were barely moving. Getting off the elevator on the 6th floor we rolled down the hall and came to double doors “Pediatric Oncology / Hematology” was printed on the wall. In the previous post my husband mentioned how you find yourself repeating in your head how there is no way your infant could have cancer, what kind of cruel world would that be. Leads were attached, an IV was started, tests were being taken and Ryan wanted nothing to do with it. There is a moment that I can describe as nothing short of panic, you want to grab your baby and run, run as far away as you can. The nurses assured us that everything was fine but it felt like my soul was tearing. Once the sun started to peak into the window in our room and Ryan feel asleep from pure exhaustion the nurses convinced us to try and get some sleep on the pull out couch in his room. It wasn't more than hour later that the nurses traded shifts and we were awakened again for the day. Time in a hospital is just to hurry up and wait. The oncologist came in and started right away feeling his belly and checking his reactions. The nurse took Ryan out of the room for a walk as the doctor started speaking with us, there was a look of concern on his face that I couldn't quite get past. He went on to say that Ryan was presenting with all of the signs of Leukemia and that with his current white blood cell count they wanted to move him to the ICU. Not even 12 hours before our baby was fine, he had a cold… how did we go from having a cold to being admitted to an ICU?!? At this point we decided that we needed to call our parents, we were not going to be able to do this ourselves. By the time the nurses from the ICU made it to our floor to move Ryan, Natalie (Dan’s sister) had made it to the hospital and both of our parents were on their way. They transported him and as soon as we arrive on the floor they once again began hooking up leads and I had to start explaining everything from the first cold symptom to a new doctor and staff. A whirlwind of doctors / nurses, IV drugs, tears, hugs and confusion kept me fueled until we finally crashed for the night. At some point our parents had arrived and began to ask the doctors all of the questions that we couldn't manage to get past our own lips. Each day passed day to night and we would not have known otherwise.