You Need to Get Him to the Emergency Room

At approximately 4:15 AM on Wednesday, January 29th, I was roused from sleep by my wife Sarah, a perpetual early riser. She had received a message from the lab portal that Michael’s blood work results were in. As we went over the results, we noticed that Michael’s white and red blood cell counts were low. There were three or 4 other tests that came back with counts being abnormal. This was our first inclination that something was seriously wrong.

As we began googling the causes of the various test results, among the list of possible causes, one kept coming up in almost every case: leukemia. We cried and prayed together and entrusted Michael to the Lord’s care. We anxiously awaited a call from the doctor that morning which Sarah finally received around 10:00 AM. She was told that the pediatrician wanted Michael to see a hematologist (blood specialist). However, the only one in the area wasn’t able to see him until the following Wednesday. She was told, “You need to get him to the Emergency Room.”

When I initially got the news, I planned to take Michael to the ER later in the afternoon. The fact that we were not being immediately referred to an oncologist gave me false hope that Michael’s condition was not as serious as I had initially feared. However, a little later, Sarah sent me a screen shot of a portion of the blood work results that I had not noticed earlier: Neutrophil Absolute (Critical). I did not know at the time what Neutrophil Absolute meant, but I did understand the word critical. (For the curious, Absolute Neutrophils are a specific type of white blood cell) I cleared my schedule for the day and went and picked Michal up from school. We drove to the emergency room of Covenant Medical Center in Saginaw because I knew they had a children’s hospital.

When we got to the ER, the triage nurse looked at me like I was losing my mind as I presented him with a perfectly healthy 13 year old boy (or so he thought). I explained my limited knowledge of Michael’s bloodwork results and the pediatrician’s instructions. He ordered an EKG and told us that after the EKG, we would probably go back out to the main waiting room (which was absolutely packed). Michael was getting an EKG within minutes. The tech told us that she was taking the report to the nurse, and that he would decide whether to send us to the waiting room or keep us in the triage area. To my surprise, we were told to wait in the triage area. For some reason that I will never know, within minutes we were being shown to a room. We had been put at the front of the line before everyone else in the waiting room with no explanation.

The ER doctors ordered their own set of blood tests. During this time, Sarah was able to get off work early and join us in the Emergency Room. We sat in the room and waited a few hours for the blood results to come back.

When I was on my way to pick Michael up from his school, I had called ahead to give the office a heads up that I was coming. I told the secretary that I had to pick Michael up because we had received blood work results back, and the doctor told us to take him to the emergency room. Word spread quickly, because as we waited for the blood work results, the texts, calls, and emails from the faculty and staff at the school began flooding in. Their support was and continues to be such an encouragement to us. We also began reaching out to our family members to make them aware of the situation.

When the initial tests came back, we were told that Michael’s white and red blood cell counts as well as his platelets were all low. The white blood cell count in particular was of concern because the white blood cells help attack and control infections. The normal range is 4-12, and Michael was at 1.93. We were told that He would be discharged, and that we were to quarantine him in his room until the following Wednesday when He could see the hematologist. However, they were still waiting to get a few results from the tests back that they wanted to look at before they sent us home. We were told that there was a range of things that could cause these results but that we really needed to see a specialist for more testing to determine the exact cause. Leukemia was mentioned in passing as one possible culprit.

By this point, it was late afternoon. I realized that it was highly likely that I would miss Wednesday night Prayer Meeting and made arrangements accordingly. However, I still had to go to the church to take care of a few things before the service. The plan was for me to come back to the emergency room when I was done. However, on my way to church, Sarah called me and told me that an additional test came back that seemed to alarm the resident in the ER. He actually went over his boss’s head and told us that we needed to get Michael to the Emergency Room at UofM immediately. He called ahead and told them we were coming and what was going on. He warned us that this particular blood count of blast cells was dangerously high. I highly suspect that the resident knew what Michael’s diagnosis was but wanted us to hear it from a specialist. We were not aware of it at the time, but a high blast cell count is a key indicator of leukemia. And the resident didn’t volunteer that information. He simply insisted that we get Michael to Ann Arbor as soon as possible. Sarah and Michael left the ER in Saginaw and headed to Ann Arbor immediately.