October 6, 2010

Wednesday, Oct 6^th, Katie is receiving blood transfusions and waiting to hear the type of leukemia she has so we can start chemotherapy.  We learned at 10:30am she had tdt positive cd 20 positive b cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL).  We could now get the chemo regimen for this specific type of leukemia. She will be receiving Rituxan and Hyper CVAD.  After doing research we knew that ALL in adults did not have a good prognosis but there was one thing pending that had an even worse prognosis. That was, if she was Philadelphia Chromosome positive.  We would not get that result for 4-5 days.  At 1pm, Katie was being transferred to another hospital, Harris HEB Hospital, which had an oncology unit and was familiar with the type of chemo she was to receive. By 5pm we were starting our first round of chemo. 

October 5, 2010

Tuesday, October 5^th, was the day my life was turned upside down.  I was working out at the gym and for the first time I did not have my phone on me.  I get in my car at about 10:30am to find I have about 5 missed calls starting at about 9:30 in the morning from my sister, my mom and my dad (who lives in Austin).  I knew something wasn’t right.  The first voice mail I listened to was from Katie.  All I could hear was her crying and I couldn’t make out anything she was saying.  The next voicemail was from my mom and all it said was “Kim, call me immediately.”  As you can imagine I did not even get to the third and fourth voice mails and I called my mom right away.   My mom was with my sister (Katie) at this time and Katie got on the phone and told me she received a call from the doctor she saw on Monday and he said “you need to get to the nearest hospital immediately, within the next hour.”  I guess he had just received her CBC results.  He told her that her platelets were dangerously low (11) and her white blood cell count was high (25). She told me right now she is at North Hills Hospital waiting to be direct admitted. From here it is a whirlwind.  I know by noon we knew her platelet count was <10 and her WBC count was 55.  Around 1pm the hematologist came in and told us by looking at a blood smear he is confident she has leukemia.  He was unsure at this point what kind of leukemia it was but that he wanted to proceed with a bone marrow biopsy immediately and that we needed to start chemo soon.  By late afternoon her platelets remained below 10 and her WBC count was 110.  So this was a fast moving cancer.  Out of 110 white blood cells, 106 were blastocytes (cancer).  So 96% of her white blood cells were cancer as I understood it.  At around 2pm we were doing the bone marrow biopsy in her room.  This was done with no sedation, only lidocaine to numb the skin and deep tissue.  I was holding her hand the whole time and coaching her through it.  It was the hardest thing for me to watch my own sister have to go through that much pain and nothing I could do for her.  Well, we did get through that although Katie says she will never have that done again.  She did receive blood this evening.

October 4, 2010

Well it’s Monday Oct. 4^th and she did find a doctor to see her this morning at 9am.  With the bruising, I reminded her to make sure the doctor draws a CBC.  If there was something abnormal going on I knew it would have to do with her platelets.  She said ok.  She went to her 9am appointment then came to my house to watch my kids because I had somewhere to go.  She had even more bruises on her body today and she had petechiae all over her body.  She said the Doctor drew a CBC but said he was really unsure of the cause.  He said there was a possibility that this could have been caused by taking too much Motrin.  My sister had recently had a root canal done and was on antibiotics, pain medicine and Motrin.  I thought this was a very unlikely cause because I knew she was not taking an abnormal amount of Motrin.  Although I still had no idea what was causing her bruising, I will say I wasn’t too worried at the time.

October 3, 2010 Katie's story from my eyes...

My sister Katie Waggoner, age 28, is suffering from a relatively rare form of Blood Cancer (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Philadelphia Positive - ALL PH+) and undergoing treatment in a local hospital.

This is my sister’s story from my eyes… by: Kim Cason. 

It was Sunday night, Oct 3^rd, and I went to visit my sister when I got off work.  We were just hanging out at her house for about an hour.  As I was about to leave she said she wanted to show me some bruises she had on her body in random places.  She said the bruises did not hurt but she didn’t remember doing anything to cause them.  I had no idea what could have caused the bruises.  Well anyone that knows Katie knows she is a worry wart.  So she told me that she is going to make an appointment to see a doctor in the morning.  I said ok, well be sure they draw a CBC (a blood test) when you go, fully knowing I was thinking to myself she should just wait and see if the bruises go away on their own.