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Okay, so just a little introduction here. This was for my bio class. We had to write a story about, well, you dont need to know, too complicated to explain through the computer.
I do not often think of the day that my sister, Katherine, got leukemia. Though, the fact that it came back has me thinking of that day. It had been a month after her birthday that we started noticing some odd things. She would get a scratch and it would bleed for an abnormal length of time. She would have pains in her joints. And then she lost most of her appetite. My mom decided it was time to take her to the doctor.
It was early in the morning and mom insisted that I come to the doctors because she couldn’t find a sitter. I was wedged in the middle of Katherine and my brother Ethan, who was four at the time. The drive to the doctors seemed to take forever. Katherine complained the whole way there that her arm and elbow hurt, and Ethan kept making car noises every few seconds. I remember yelling at Ethan and then Katherine to stop making noise, to which my older sister Jamie replied teasingly, “Don’t be so loud, Naomi.” I had slumped back and glared at no one in particular.
When we got to the doctors we had to wait in the waiting room. It took a while because there were a lot of other people that had come earlier. We all sat down and waited. Katherine was impatient and whiny. So was Ethan. Jamie and I sat patiently and waited while mom talked to one of her good friends whose son had been sick for a long time. Katherine had turned to me and asked me if she was going to be ok. She looked scared, and Katherine usually never got scared of anything. It was then that I thought something was probably wrong. I put my fears for her aside and nodded my head that she was going to be ok. Even if it was something bad, I knew in the end that she would be ok.
The doctor called her in. Everyone was told to stay in the waiting room so that we didn’t crowd her too much. The doctor said that mom could go in with Katherine though. As they were walking into the hallway that lead to the examination rooms, Katherine turned back to look at me and let go of mom’s hand. She ran over to me and grabbed my hand, timidly turned back to look at the doctor, and asked if I could also come. The doctors look softened when he saw how scared she looked, and said that it would be fine. I had looked down at her and saw she had on a smile. The first one I had seen since the day before. Mom had looked at Jamie and said to watch Ethan. We walked hand in hand, Katherine and I. When we caught up to mom and the doctor, mom took Katherine’s other hand and we continued walking.
We walked into one of the examination rooms and Kat sat down on the table/bed as the doctor said he would be right back. I took a seat on one of the stools as did mom. We all waited quietly until the doctor came back. When he did, he asked Kat a few questions, she answered and he wrote down her answers on a sheet of paper attached to a clip board. He then told Kat to roll up her sleeves and show him where she felt pain. Kat told him that the pain felt deep, like it was in her bones. The doctors look didn’t change the whole time she was telling him what she felt and what her symptoms were. He felt her groin and neck; he said he was checking for swelling. We waited while he checked her over and asked her a few more questions. Kat would answer in between yawns. The doctor seemed to notice how often she was yawning and how it was a bit hard for her to keep her eyes open. He asked if she had slept well, and she nodded but said she was still really tired. The doctor finished examining her and told us that he would like to take a blood sample and that he would get back the results in about a day or two. He went to leave to go get the supplies and mom followed him out. He shut the door half way but I could hear him quietly talking to mom. I couldn’t make out what he was saying though. After a few minutes of silence in the room, mom came back in looking grave. I asked her what was wrong and her look vanished and she smiled slightly at me, but she looked tired and warn out. She said nothing was wrong, that the doctor just wanted to make sure.
The doctor came back and took Kat’s blood. He then told us again when he would get the results and that he would have someone call us to give us the results or we could come back in if felt necessary or if her symptoms got worse. We all left and went back to the car and began to drive home. Everyone was pretty quiet on the drive and no one said anything about what Kat might have.
When we got home mom asked Jamie and I to meet her in the kitchen. After we hung up our coats and took off our shoes, we went to the kitchen. She was standing there with a worried look on her face. This time when I asked her what’s wrong she didn’t smile and say nothing. “The doctor thinks, possibly, that it could be leukemia.” Leukemia was a new word to me. I hadn’t known what it had meant at the time. So I asked. She told me it was a type of cancer. I wanted to know more on leukemia; what it was exactly, what it did, and how to get rid of it.
I went on the family laptop and went to Google. I had typed in leukemia and it had come up with a good site telling me everything I needed to know. I finished reading what leukemia was, and found that yes, it was a type of cancer, and that it eventually interferes with the body's production of other types of blood cells, including red blood cells and platelets. It didn’t tell me what it looked like though. So I also Googled that. It came up with a picture, and the cancer cell looked like a white circular sack. I switched back to the other site and found that leukemia cancer cells reside in the blood and in the bone marrow.
As the doctor had said, we got the results of the blood test the next day, which confirmed that Katherine had leukemia. It was decided that she would take some medication to help kill the cancer cells, and also that she would participate in chemotherapy. After some time, she finally started to get better. The treatment was working, and we were relieved of most of our stress. I had been so worried about Kat, and if she was going to be ok. The doctor said she would still have to come in every few years to make sure it didn’t come back, and even if she did come in, it didn’t mean she couldn’t get it again. He said the chances were low though. So it’s now as I’m sitting here in the hospital, waiting for Kat and mom, that I wonder why it came back, if the chances were low. I wonder if anything else could have made it more likely that the leukemia wouldn’t come back. Even though it is back, I know Kat will be alright.
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