I know in past blog posts, I have talked about the miracle that Brynna is, but I have just had it on my heart to share the absolute complete picture with you guys. Some of this will be things you’ve already heard, but I wanted to have it all written in the same place, for Brynna to read someday…and for us to look back on during the hard days ahead to be reminded of what God is doing.
As a side note…I have gone back and forth on sharing some of the pictures in this post. I have never publicly posted them for obvious reasons. At the time I took them, I took them for us. They are all from Tuesday and Wednesday, after her diagnosis. It makes me cry, just looking at our little girl like this, but then when you see her today, it’s truly amazing how far she has come, how much of a miracle she is!
It was about 11pm on Sunday, April 8th that we finally heard the words that we already knew in our hearts…our daughter had leukemia. I remember our sweet doctor walking us through the overarching view of where Brynna was, the treatment, and what the next few hours and days would hold. She asked us if we had any questions and I will forever remember this conversation…it is seared into my heart and my mind. With tears streaming down our faces, I said I just had one question, and I knew it wasn’t one she could answer, but I had to ask, “Would Brynna survive?? Is she going to be ok??” Dr. Kelly looked at me and answered, “Your daughter is VERY sick. We are going to do everything we possibly can to help her.” In later conversations, Kelly told me she wasn’t sure Brynna would survive the night or the next few days. She said she didn’t sleep at all that night, thinking about our girl.
When Brynna was admitted to the hospital, her white blood cell count was 600,000, one of the HIGHEST they have ever seen. One of the PICU nurses who has worked in the PICU for years and was there the night Brynna was admitted, said that Brynna was easily in the top 5 of the palest, sickest kids she has seen come in. Along with her insanely elevated white blood cell count, many of Brynna’s internal organs were incredibly enlarged, due to the leukemia cells that were infiltrating them…see, that’s the thing with leukemia…because it is a cancer of the blood, it is literally EVERYWHERE in the body, because your blood flows everywhere. Every single organ, every single vein, everything is touched by this awful cancer. Brynna’s kidneys were the worst, at nearly double their size. Her kidneys were so bad that they listed “acute kidney injury” on her chart right next to “leukemia”, as the reasons she was in the hospital.
The first night Brynna was in the hospital, she was hooked up to dialysis to help her kidneys, as well as a machine to strip her blood of as many of the leukemia cells as possible. Her blood was literally sludge, with 98% of it comprised of leukemia cells. I’ve mentioned this in a past blog post, but when I walked in to the ER room and saw her that Sunday night (having only seen her 5 hours earlier before she and Ben left for KidMed), I was absolutely floored at how much she had digressed. She looked like death…swollen, bleeding, bruised, pale. It was heart wrenching. Over the course of that first week, Brynna defied the odds…or rather, GOD. Her body rallied, responding incredibly well to the cancer treatments. The first few weeks were filled with SO many up and downs…two steps forward, one step back, or sometimes one step forward, two steps back. She was diagnosed with a genetic marker in her leukemia, classifying her as very high risk. They found a bleed in one of her retinas, again pushing her risk factor up. Yet, this girl hung on.
When we went in for our Day 28 testing, Kelly was very optimistic, but realistic as well. She said that she was optimistically hopeful that her test would come back negative, but that even if it came back just slightly positive, they may just go ahead and progress as if it was negative, simply because her counts were SO high on Day 1, and even just a small positive would still show that her body responded well to treatment. One thing that no one mentioned, but that we all knew, was that if her tests came back high positive (or the genetic marker was there), we would be looking at a bone marrow transplant immediately.
The evening of the testing, we received our first phone call with a few of the results. The very early, preliminary results looked like recovering marrow, but they did show 4% blasts. Blasts are immature white blood cells, and generally leukemia cells (since leukemia cells are really just immature white blood cells that multiply at an insane rate and take over the body). Kelly said that most likely, it was just new white blood cells forming, but they weren’t positive and had to wait for the full picture results. As a comparison, Brynna had 98% blasts when she was admitted to the hospital, and 100% of those were leukemia cells.
The next evening, Kelly called us again with more preliminary results. This time, it was mostly good news again, but there was a bunch of uncertainty linked to it. The pathologist had seen some MLL cells, which could mean that the genetic marker was there, and that the MLL cells were coming out now that the chemo wiped out the ALL cells (this would be AWFUL). The pathologist thought that it may be just recovering marrow, but, like the results from the day before, they couldn’t be certain until they had the full results from the lab across the country. They also thought that they saw a few leukemia cells, but it was a very small amount, if any. This was Friday night. We knew we wouldn’t have any full results until Monday night at the earliest, so it was a long weekend.
On Monday afternoon, Kelly called with the INCREDIBLY MIRACULOUS news that there were ZERO cancer cells, and the MLL they had seen was most definitely just recovering marrow. I had tears streaming down my face and literally had no words except, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness” coming out of my mouth. At one point, I was able to mutter, “She’s a miracle!!”, and Kelly said something else I’ll never forget. She said, “You know, you guys keep talking about that, and now I am certain that God has something truly incredible in store for your little girl. She is something special.” Que the weeping. When we met with Kelly a couple of days later to go over the next phase of treatment, I asked her if she was surprised by Brynna’s remission results. She told us that although she was hopeful, that yes, she was surprised, and it was truly a miracle considering all her high risk factors. There is no explanation other than GOD. Look what I AM is doing!! We still have a long road, that will probably hold a handful of complications, but we know God is with us, and with Brynna. She is a miracle, and I can’t WAIT to see what God has in store for her!
Looking back at our hospital stay,Ben and my dad have both agreed that they felt that Brynna was under spiritual attack while at the hospital, mainly in those long night hours…the spiritual warfare was evident in many aspects, and they each felt personally attacked, but ultimately knew it was the fight for Brynna’s soul and life. Your prayers SUSTAINED her, and us. THANK YOU. That can never fully express our gratitude, but thank you. Over the past couple of weeks of being home, one thing that we all have noticed is Brynna’s joy. Her demeanor is just more peaceful and more joy-filled than it was before. She’s quicker to smile than ever before. She laughs easier. She grins bigger. She just exudes a JOY in a way that only someone who has faced the dark side can. That is God. That is an answer to prayer. That is our miracle. All praise and glory to our Lord!
“Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!” Psalm 115:1
