It all started when I noticed her pants getting a little loose. The complete opposite of what should be happening to my daughter at 4 years old. When I took her in to see her doctor, it was confirmed that she had not gained weight in close to 6 months.

My’isha’s primary care physician (PCP) requested blood work and urine analysis (UA). We waited for results, and the results looked reassuring. With routine scans coming up right around the corner, there wasn’t too much more we could do.

Before scan time came, My’isha fell and came to me with a very swollen arm. I knew it was broken. When a little girl breaks her arm, you would expect there to be a lot of pain, which there wasn’t. Which is probably why they sent us for outpatient x-rays and were just going to get a call to let us know if it was broken or not. I knew the bone was broken and needed to be stabilized before I could let her go to sleep, so I made the phone calls to find out the results. It wasn’t until I was on the way to the Emergency Room with her that I received a call with the x-ray results. Her radius had what looked like a small break. The ER stabilized her arm with a brace and referred us to a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon.

How convenient was it that Memorial Hospital’s system was down and the orthopedic dr had no access to my daughter’s x-ray? It may or may not have made a difference, but he took my word for it. I told him that her doctor’s office confirmed it was broken which was enough for him to cast her up for 3 weeks.

A week later, My’isha went in for her routine scans. I knew something wasn’t right when a very unfamiliar feeling came over my body while they were doing her CT scan. As many times as my daughter has been back for similar procedures, I have never had such a strong feeling come over my body. I had no reason to cry and be worried, but I was.

So when we went upstairs to talk with her Dr about the results, I was nervous and uneasy. The whole visit just didnt go as normal. Usually he comes in with the CT results right when he comes and tells me so I am not worried. This time, he had some of the labs, but didn’t have the CT scans. We talked as normal and the exam went as normal. When he went to go get the scan results, he came back and said they were clear with the exception of a swollen lymph node under her arm. I was relieved at that point, but he wanted me to feel the lymph node so that when we went to go see her PCP to follow up, I would know how big it was.

Within 2 days, I noticed it was a little larger, so I went ahead and made the follow-up appointment with her PCP. It was 3 days later when we went to see her PCP, the lymph node was even larger. Her PCP showed concern and wanted it out in a week, but of course, it was 3 days before we saw the pediatric surgeon and another 5 days before the procedure.

When I noticed the lymph node was growing so quickly, I pretty much knew that her cancer had returned. It was the only thing that made sense to me. Normal cells just don’t grow that quickly. THAT was when my worry began to set in. I started looking into what CBD products I should be giving her and proper dosing. <<<That is another post on my A New Kind Of Mommy Blog because that was a battle in itself.

We went in for the surgery and all went as planned, no big rush of worry like before, likely because I already knew. Anesthesia and surgery went fine. They were able to remove the lymph node completely and My’isha recovered nicely. The surgeon said that it looked like nothing more than an infected lymph. I knew he was mistaking, but I let it make me feel a little better.

We went in to get her cast removed 2 days after her surgery. They orthopedic surgeon looked at the cast and said it looked loose enough to pull off and avoid using the saw and stuff, so he did.

The skin under the cast looked great, but the sight of the break didn’t look much better to me. It was still swollen and looked a little deformed. He assured my mom and I that no x-rays would be needed because we know that it is healed and the swelling will go down.

I didn’t feel good about his answer, but he wasn’t going to do anything, so we left, and I called her PCP office for a follow up appointment for her arm.

The dr that saw My’isha’s arm showed some concern and wanted the arm x-rayed. Of course, while we were there I asked about the bipsy results, but they weren’t in yet. So we left to go right down the street for x-rays.

My’isha’s dr office called me as we were walking into the hospital for he x-ray and said the dr wants us to come back after the x-ray. I knew I was in for some news, but I was kidn of hoping that is was just to go over the x-rays. Part of me was really hoping that they were just being proactive and were thinking it would need a splint. Another part of me knew we were going back for biopsy results.

After her x-rays we went back to her dr office. They got us back right away, but we sat in the room for quite awhile. I figured they may be just waiting for the x-ray to come back.

When her PCP walked in and not the dr we saw earlier in the day for her arm, I knew. I knew we were going to get biopsy results.

Biopsy result: metastatic neuroblastoma… the cancer is back. The disease has affected her radius and there are lesions all through the bone. The bone needs to be supported. We need to do a full work-up to find out if there is another source of disease or if the lymph node was the tumor site.

The neuroblastoma that we went through a year and a half of treatment to get rid of is back. So here we go again.