The Bird Family

This is my English 101 paper I wrote, so it might be a little dramatic but it should answer a lot of questions everybody's been asking me.

BriAnne Bird

February 10, 2010

Significant Event Essay

New Year Struggles

My husband and I had big plans for 2010; this was the year we were going to get our finances under control, by getting out of debt and saving money. But when you find out your husband has cancer, all of that just doesn’t seem important anymore.

It was Christmas Day 2009, Warren and I decided to go visit our friends from our old neighborhood, we started at one end of the street picked up some friends and walked to the next house, by the time we got to the last house we had a group of at least 40 people. It was great, we all hung out, visited, played some basketball and then it was back home to do the family thing.

This year there was my husband Warren, my 11 year old son Trey, Warren’s oldest son Josh and his girlfriend, Warren’s mom Nancy and her boyfriend Don. We had a nice Christmas dinner and then sat around the fire pit out front to visit. The night ended with Warren and me wrestling around until we both ended up on the ground laughing.

Over the next few days I started noticing bruises on my husband’s body. I first saw them on his inner thighs; these were the worst, big black, blue, and purple bruises. When I asked Warren about them he insisted that they were from our little wrestling match on Christmas day. I had a hard time believing him, because we wrestled around a lot and he never had bruises like this before. Then there was more bruising on his back, down his rib cage, and on his shoulder. He had an excuse for those too; he said he fell into a wood pile. Warren started complaining of stomach pain and was very tired and fatigued.

Getting Warren to go to the doctor was like pulling teeth. He came up with every excuse in the world saying he was just fine and he didn’t need to go to the doctor. Nancy convinced him that he could be having an allergic reaction to his cholesterol medication and he should go. Warren hung on to that, and told Dr. Gold that was the problem. Dr Gold is an older man, his neck always tilts a bit to his right, probably just from old age. He wears big gold rings on most of his fingers, and gold chains around his neck. He wears these eye glasses that have a tint on them; I never could stand those glasses because it’s hard to see his eyes when he’s talking to you. Warren has always really liked him and said he was a great doctor. I have to agree because he didn’t fully buy the allergic reaction story and ordered blood tests.

Two days later, Saturday Jan. 9^th, Warren get’s a phone call from the on call doctor. She told us she only calls on Saturdays for emergencies. Warren’s white blood cell count is at 17,000 and we need to call the doctor first thing Monday morning. Before Warren even hung up the phone I called Nancy, we knew this was not good.

The next 16 days were a living hell…

Jan 13^th Warren got his blood drawn; we meet with Dr. Gold an hour and a half later. Dr. Gold walked in the room, looked at me and said “Don’t freak out.” Now I know that I can be a little dramatic at times but was that really necessary? So I didn’t say a word. Warren’s white blood cell count was at 120,000. Dr. Gold said it may be leukemia and told us that we need to go to the cancer center. I felt sick like the room was spinning. We walked over to the nurses counter to set up the appointment and the nurses aid had a look on her face like she was going to cry for us. I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or start crying horrifically, so I very calmly and not dramatically, told Warren I would meet him outside.

At the cancer center we met with Dr. DeRoock to schedule the bone marrow biopsy. Dr. DeRoock looked way too young to be a cancer doctor; he couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than me, early 30’s maybe. He had jet black hair and a nice smile but everything about him just screams inexperienced.

On Jan. 20^th, our 3 year wedding anniversary, the biopsy was done. Warren was so scared and nervous about this, they gave him the option to have anesthetic or a local numbing shot. I told him to pick the anesthetic, he was worried he wouldn’t wake up; I still convinced him it was the better choice. That was the longest two and a half hours of my life. I passed most of the time on the phone with Nancy and my mom. Everything went really well and Warren didn’t remember a thing. The nurse told us he was hilarious while he was under. He was the first and only patient that tried to get up off the table while under and sell the nurse doors and windows.

Trying to create small talk was all that Nancy and I could do to try and keep Warren calm. We had already been waiting for 45 minutes when Dr. DeRoock finally walked into the room. Warren was really upset; he hates having to wait when you have a scheduled appointment. He greeted us all with handshakes and sat down at the computer. He looked over a number of different screens and then looked at us and said, “I don’t have all the blood work back yet but from what I can tell from the biopsy I’m 95% sure that it’s CML” (Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia). Warren said, “So it’s the good one.” We had done enough research over the last few weeks to know that CML was one of the better Leukemia’s to have. It meant Warren didn’t have to go straight to the hospital from this doctor’s appointment to start Chemotherapy, there were other treatment options. We listened to all the instructions from the doctor: Everyday medication, blood tests once a month, another biopsy in 6 months and a regular doctors visit every 3 months to go over blood tests and monitor how Warren is doing.

We had all been praying that if Warren had to have Leukemia please make it the good one, and our prayers were answered. We meet with the hematologist specialist on Friday. Hopefully this doctor is old enough to be a cancer doctor.