May 2nd, a day I will never forget! We had been to the pediatrician at least 7 times beginning in January, RSV they said, but never quite recovered, Rhinovirus, no real recovery, perhaps just normal infections from school, nothing, 2 trips to the E.R. Nothing, a trip to get blood tests, maybe mono. Then one day after he returned to school the teacher was concerned because she felt some hard knots on the back of his neck. Straight back to the pediatrician but by this time. The whole underside of the front of his neck had swollen. The pediatrician response was, I think it’s his tonsils, so we were recommended to a specialist that put us on a list to be seen in 3 weeks??? That same night after seeing the pediatrician Ezra started crying and said he could not breathe when he was trying to sleep. So back to the E.R. We went, but this time there was an older physician that said, let’s take some X-ray and see what’s going on! In the X-ray room after they were taken I heard the tech make a noise, sounded like a surprise “huh” she said and I became alarmed and asked her what ? it was? She said I’m not skilled at reading these let’s get them to the doctor and see what he says, but she looked shocked and i began to worry! In less than 10 minutes the doctor basically rushed into the room and said, has your pediatrician talked to you about any of this, and I said about what? He said the X-rays look to show lymphoma, and if he were my son I would get him to a children’s hospital yesterday! Imagine the phone call to his mother, the pure panic, the packing of bags in minutes for the 5 hour road trip to Cooks Children’s in Ft Worth Texas in the middle of the night. Ezra’s war had begun and we were headed into battle! Every organ in his body was surrounded by a mass, we were only hours or days away from losing him and we never knew! May 2nd 2024