Tuesday, January 13

All morning we hung out in Sou's room waiting for Dr. Liu to return with the results of his bone marrow. At one point, Sou told me to hand him the laptop. I watched as he typed in the address for google. Then he asked me how to spell leukemia. He asked me a couple of times before, "What's leukemia?" or "Isn't leukemia that thing where you loose all your hair?" I would say that I wasn't sure and try to change the subject. I didn't want him to stress out before even knowing what he actually had. 

"L-E-U-K-E-M-I-A" I told him. I took a deep breath and saw the page of search results. On the side of the page he spotted the word "cancer" among the links. 

"It's cancer?" he asked. I looked closer at the page pretending to read the words. 

"I guess so. But don't worry. We don't even know the results yet." 

Doctor Liu came by at about noon, just about five minutes after Sou's lunch arrived. After the "Hi, how are you"'s, he got straight to the point. 

"Basically, your tests came back and you have what we call Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Even though I had a feeling that that was the case, I was kinda hoping that it would be something else. He also told us that the lab was still working on finding out what sub-type of AML he had and that would determine the type of treatment he would be receiving. 

"I'm going to make some phone calls and try to get you on a flight down to Seattle, possibly tomorrow. You guys can expect to be there for at least a month." Dr. Liu told us. After he had left the room, I looked at Sou and saw his eyes water up. 

"Am I gonna die? I don't wanna die."

"No, it's gonna be okay. We'll go to Seattle because they have a better facility there" I told him.

I made the first phone call out to my mom, which was the first of many I had made that day. I remember calling Elsie, Auntie Chit, Irelynn, Michelle, Gramma Jean, Nang, Maria, Kristina and Dawne. There was probably more people. Sou focused on contacting his family and close friends. 

A few hours later, a nurse came by and said that I should be prepared to leave at any moment. The doc had found a provider to accept Sou as a patient at the University of Washington Medical Center. They even had a bed ready for him. All they needed to do was have his flight set up. I began to panic because I had the impression that his flight would be the next day. I still had so many things to do before I left town for a month. I needed to pack, make arrangements for my cat, find someone to check my mail, make sure Sou's insurance premium was paid to Brown Jug before leaving, write out checks for rent and my Scion and let my apartment manager know that I was leaving for a month. Of course, I figured everything out. But being the person that I am, I tend to "freak out" when overwhelmed. 

I got my cousin Irelynn and MIchelle to help manage the cat and the apartment while being gone and to drop off a couple checks around town so the bills would get paid. Once back at the hospital, I noticed that Sou's dinner hadn't arrived yet. It was about 6:30pm. He mentioned that he would be receiving blood that night and they probably didn't want him to eat. I thought nothing of it until he complained of being hungry two hours later. I made my way through the halls in search of his nurse. Every time I came upon a nurse, they were like, "Oh check with his nurse." So I hunted the chic down. 

"So, Sou didn't get his dinner tonight. Is that because he's getting a transfusion tonight?"

"Uh, I don't think food would be a problem. Let me call down stairs," she said. She later returned to the room with a tray of food. 

"Sorry about that, here's some dinner," she said. I looked down at the tray and there was a big sub sandwich full of veggies and a bunch of fruit. It looked very yummy. Then I looked at the nurse.

"Isn't he not supposed to have any fresh fruits or vegetables?" I asked.

"OOOOh really?....Oh right! He's on that neutropenic diet? I'll be right back." Then she left with the food. 

Another nurse came by and said, "Eight o'clock tomorrow morning, be ready." Throughout the night Sou had multiple visitor's stop by to wish him luck and to give their blessings. Michelle, David, Irelynn, Xenophon, Pao, Cody and Thon stopped by, some getting lost on the way to the room and some forgetting that they said they'd bring nail clippers. I think having visitors boosted his mood, which was great. 

Occasionally, Sou would ask me to take his temperature. After three hours of receiving a dose of Tylenol, his fever was at 104.2. His nurse gave him ice packs to help and a pain pill to help with the wonderful headache that came with the fever. He also received two units of type A blood. It kinda helped his fever, but not really.