Raegan Lawson Raegan Lawson

A few weeks back Raegan got sick with strep, but for her age it's very rare to get strep especially when she doesn't go to daycare and no one in the family has strep. Anyways, after giving her the strep antibiotics for about a week she still wasn't getting better so we took her to the doctors again and they drew her blood. They called back telling us she was low on white and red blood cells and she needs to be rushed to the ER. Once at the ER they took her blood again and found that she doesn't have one neutrofill in her body as she's supposed to have at least a thousand. On Saturday (Christmas Eve) They tell us that they have been studying her blood and so far they didn't see anything that looked abnormal or what would look like Leukemia but they needed to get her bone marrow to make sure it wasn't Leukemia. We had our hopes up of course, hoping it was just a mystery or a virus that would just go away. But then on Sunday when she had her surgery for the bone marrow the results came back as Leukemia. Our sweet little baby girl has Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. We had so many questions. Was it something we did? Is it hereditary? Will it mess with her reproduction system? And of course, what do we do next? So on Monday she had surgery again but this time they were inserting what they call a port, which is like an IV under her skin. This is to make it easier for herself and for the doctors to give her the chemo and to draw her blood without the extra pokes. During the same surgery she had a spinal tap, they put chemo up and throughout her spine to make sure there isn't any cancer cells hiding around in her spine. On Tuesday she had her first chemo treatment and she was also given the steroids that go with the chemo for the first time. The doctors mentioned that this month will be the hardest not only for Raegan but for us as a family as well because they want us treating her like she isn't sick, but we need to know her limits. Her muscles and bones are going to weaken and she is going to get tired a lot faster then anyone is used to. She is going to gain weight, have an attitude and loose the hair that took her so long to grow. They also said when she starts to grow her hair back it is possible for it to grow back completely different, color and everything, which can kind of be exciting to watch, but now she just has to loose her hair.