2 Years Ago Today

November 16 is a date that stands out for our family...an "anniversary" of sorts. It's the day our dear Elianna had her bone marrow test done. It's also the day we were told the results looked bad...very bad. Read my post 2 years ago here. That week was officially the hardest week of our lives to date. Living in the "unknown", thinking the worst case scenario (ie: your one year old daughter had a terminal illness), because you have just been told the worst is likely and now you have to wait for the "official" word. What a very, very, very hard week that was. It gave us only the tiniest of tiniest glimpses into what parents who have a child with a terminal illness might feel like.

The official word came about a week later when our pediatric hematologist called and said something very close to this, "Mrs. ____ I just wanted to ease your mind. Your daughter does not have cancer. When I first saw the results, I saw leukemia. She has a very high number of blast cells that indicated leukemia. That is why I called your husband right away. However, when we did the complete study, we did not find any cancerous cells. There is no cancer." Diagnosis: chronic benign neutropenia, though the high number of blast cells was unexplainable and something he had never seen before. What I wrote about the diagnosis. When we received this news, I scooped her up and danced around the house. I really did. We were told she had a very good chance of growing out of it sometime during childhood.

And she did. :-)

This past March (a year and a half after her initial diagnosis), a very late night run to the emergency room with Elianna due to her having a fever (standard procedure for her condition) turned out to be a night for celebrating and praising the Lord for healing her. After all the usual blood tests were done, we waited, anticipating an overnight stay in the hospital for monitoring. Instead, we were told her blood work was normal. Normal. We went home, praising the Lord the entire time. I'm sure no one ever walked out of that ER with grins as wide as ours. Our daughter was well again.

Elianna means "The Lord has answered."

He answered with "yes."

To God be the glory,



*Read the post I wrote  One Year Ago .