What happened?

I received a lovely letter from a close friend today about Catherine. I always like receiving letters and e-mails because if people write how they speak, you can hear the voice in the writing! My friend asked me how Catherine was first found to be ill, and I realise that I haven't really written about this on her blog. So here goes.

About six weeks ago, the right side of Catherine's neck began to swell. We were on holiday at the time and we thought it was mumps which was concerning enough anyway!. We took her to the doctor who referred her to the hospital with what they thought was an infected gland. At that point, they took her bloods but everything was normal. Since then, we have been in and out of hospital as the gland kept going up and down. However, on the last dose of antibiotics, the gland came up again before treatment was complete. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was now something more serious so we went to the hospital again. It was here that the bloods were taken and they found that one of the white blood cell levels was down and she had no immune system. We were isolated while the bloods were sent to the specialists, and within six hours we were in the 'special room with the posh tea-set' where parents go to be told 'bad news'. The shock was extreme and I just wanted to be able to go through it on Catherine's behalf. At this point we were told the diagnosis was 90% likely.

So here was the beginning of this story. Thankfully, it was spotted extremely early as normally children are much more ill before they arrive at hospital. However, the general prognosis is the same whether it is detected early or not. Early detection does mean, though, that a child will be in a better state to take the chemotherapy.