Coincidence or miracle
Get your son to the Emergency Room – NOW! When we heard those words we scared to say the least. It was Halloween night, my 3 year old son had been coughing for a little over a week, but it had suddenly taken on an eerie sound. My husband’s intuition told him to take him to the Pediatrician late that evening and for that we will always be grateful.
The Pediatrician examined my son and found his spleen to be enlarged and an X-ray showed a mass in his chest the size of an adult fist. I could hear the fear in my husband’s voice as he told me this and to say they didn’t know what was wrong. They were going to the Emergency Room and I should meet them down there.
As I drove to the Emergency Room, my thoughts filled with fear. I tried to tell myself that everything would be ok, but he was only 3, and he had a mass in his chest, that couldn’t be good. Please, God, this has to be a bad dream. It was as if I was in the twilight zone, this couldn’t possibly be real.
When I arrived at the Emergency Room, I could see the fear in my husband’s face. He didn’t know much more, but he was in the right place and somehow we both knew that everything would be ok.
The Emergency Room doctors had some ideas of what could possibly be wrong, but no one was clearly stating a diagnosis. This only lead to our anxiety as the time passed and we sat wondering what could possibly be wrong. Just when we thought we could take no more stress, the miracle happened.
Being Halloween night, one could expect there to be a few sprains and broken bones in the pediatric Emergency Room. As luck would have it, one of those mishaps was the son of one of the top Pediatric Oncologists who worked at the hospital. While her son waited to be seen, she was able to examine my son. Although she couldn’t say for sure what was wrong until they ran some tests, she was pretty sure it was a form of leukemia which was treatable. My son was admitted to the hospital that night and started treatment the next day.
But that was only part of the miracle. The next day, my son was scheduled at 2:00 pm for surgery as he needed to have a port put in his chest for the treatment. When the surgery was over, one of the doctors came out and assured us that my son was fine, and they would be able to start the treatment right away. She started to leave, but came back with one more piece of information. The tumor had tripled in size since the night before. Had we not gotten my son to the Emergency Room when we did, it might have been too late.
Some might call these coincidences; but I call them miracles. The fact that my husband’s intuition guided him to get my son where he needed to be – when the timing was critical – was more than a coincidence. And the fact that one of the countries leading Pediatric Oncologists just happened to be there due to a Halloween mishap I believe to be more than a coincidence. But the reality is, I’m not sure I care. I’m just grateful that we were in the right place at the right time and were able to get my son treated. Although we had many ups and downs during the treatment, today he is a happy healthy boy, and cancer-free.