Down Hill Drop

OK so everyone who has been through this before tells us that it is like a constant roller coaster. Well today we had our first major down hill drop! It scared us like crazy, but turns out that we are on the next straight away cruising along. We went back to the clinic today for Cora's spinal injection that she was supposed to have on Monday. Her cough sounded better, not great, but good enough to be sedated. So it was a go. After listening to her heart, Dr. Johnston sat down and told me there was something he wanted to speak with me about. He said that last time they did a spinal tap on Cora there were extra white blood cells in her spinal fluid and a few of them looked abnormal and resembled leukemia cells. He said that he would be VERY surprised if she had relapsed in her spinal fluid because she had taken to chemo so well so far. He did say that he wanted to take an extra sample of spinal fluid today for further testing. I broke out in a total sweat and nearly had a panic attack, but for Cora's sake I held it together at the doctor's office. They did the procedure, everything went fine, and he said he'd call me this afternoon after pathology reviewed this spinal fluid sample. We left the office, I got home, put a movie in for Cora, got her a snack, and went in the back yard and completly lost it!!! The thought of relapse makes me crazy! The worry is something I cannot even explain to you. I would love to say that I don't worry about what I can't control, but I am not there yet! Anyway, Dr. Johnson called this afternoon and said that for now he thinks everything is OK. I am about to get really technical here, but there is no other real way to explain it. Here's what he told me.
You typically don't have white blood cells in spinal fluid. An increased number of white blood cells can mean leukemia. A leukemia cell looks a little different than a white blood cell and reproduces much more rapidly. Sometimes when you inject chemotherapy into the spinal fluid, you can get a few white blood cells in there as a result of the chemo. On December 13th, Cora's spinal fluid had 0 white blood cells in the sample. The following week, her spinal fluid had 1 white cell. The third week, her spinal fluid had 3 white cells. Last week her spinal fluid had 4 white cells and a couple of them looked abnormal. THE ABNORMAL CELLS WERE THE CAUSE FOR ALARM! However, leukemia cells do not wear a sign that says "I AM A LEUKEMIA CELL." They do reproduce very very quickly which means if there were more today, this would not be good. Today's spinal fluid sample only showed 1 white blood cell. Therefore, we cannot be sure, but it doesn't look to be any type of relapse. The abnormal cells could have been immature white cells. This is fabulous news for now. He said from now on we will just check her spinal fluid very very carefully. So while this is not as 100% certain as I would like, we will take it for now! Thanks so much for all of your prayers and support! We love love love you all and couldn't do this without you! As for our little patient, Cora is feeling great and looking so much better! She is getting very very silly and perky! We love her spunk! It's a good thing for her to be spunky!