Cole Hartkopp Cole Hartkopp Leukemia

First post: Dec 1, 2020 Latest post: Mar 26, 2024
The journey, how did we get here? If you ask Cole, he will tell you he emphatically knew he had Leukemia, before any tests and that's where we begin. Halloween 2020, Cole went to urgent care as he had a sore throat and low fever, didn't feel well. After a negative covid test and negative strep test, they prescribed a Zpak. His signs were completely in line with any number of fall seasonal illnesses. He felt good for a handful of days but the antibiotics wore off and he was back to a low fever and overall feeling crummy. He's also a college student who sometimes sleeps for 10-12 hours and other times sleeps 4-6 hours.  As parents we encouraged him to get more rest, he's not someone who gets sick often and he said he feels fine all day, just not great at night, but also not miserable. 
It was somewhere around early to mid November that he shared he's sweating profusely at night and either he's a 50 yr old woman in menopause or he has leukemia. Of course, we laughed and said he's neither, but Cole kept saying he just might have it, leukemia that is. Taking a Tylenol would get him through the day and subside the headache and sore throat but at night he would feel worse, have a low fever. 
After a weekend of what Cole described as a Migraine, we scheduled an appointment with primary care doctor Nov 24, he wasn't "kicking this bug" and it was time to see what's going on. Nov 24 Cole's symptoms meant the doctor follows Covid protocol, more nasal swabs, chest xray and blood draw. They tested again for strep too. Then sent him home to await the test results. Cole was frustrated as it's more of the wait and see and really just wanted to get to feeling better. 
The blood test was testing for many things and at 5:45am on Wed Nov 25 my phone starts to ring, the on-call doctor had been trying to reach Cole for about 30 minutes and now called his emergency contact. There is nothing I can say that makes it easy to hear a calm, caring doctor say this is urgent and I have his test results and it is news that you need to take immediate action on, it looks like your son has leukemia and I need you to take him to the ER immediately. The day started immediately. 
With Covid, only 1 could go with Cole and Blain felt he and Cole would keep each other company and be calm, cool and collected together. I think it was to see who was working the ER shift, anything eye catching - LOL. (Just noticing). I stayed at home with Morgan and was available for the calls which came, find this insurance info and other such necessary paperwork and identification. 
Wednesday at 1:30pm Cole was admitted to the University of Kansas Hospital (KU) and about 2pm had a room in the blood cancer patient care unit ward. By 3:30pm the doctors arrived and explained the next flurry of events, he had a bone marrow biopsy and bone fragment collected. Morgan and I were packing their overnight bags and ran those down to the guys. The race begins. 

CaringBridge is a nonprofit social network dedicated to helping family and friends communicate with and support loved ones during a health journey. Learn more about CaringBridge.

To interact with Cole’s website, sign in or register today.

By registering with CaringBridge, you will join over 300,000 people a day who are supporting friends and family members.

Sign In Or Register
SVG_Icons_Back_To_Top
Top