Our First Steps

The call came in on Saturday, November 8th. It was the pathology Doctor. He began by saying, “Mrs. Cardell, this is Dr. So and So, (we’ve since forgotten his name – too shocked to remember) how are you feeling? How is your sore throat? We have the results of the 2nd blood test taken by Dr. Pegany….are you alone right now?” At that moment, Connie knew. She said, “No my husband is here with me.” He said, “May I speak with him”. She began to cry right then and handed me the phone. Thus began our “sacred journey”.

Over the next few minutes, I grabbed a pencil and wrote down everything he was saying. I didn’t understand it but, I did hear the word leukemia. The rest was gobblygook. He recommended we see a “specialist” Monday a.m. first thing in the morning. I hung up and turned around to see Connie crying at the kitchen counter and I had to tell her she had a form of blood cancer and we need to get her treated right away. We both cried.

On Monday Nov 11th , we started in the whirlwind. At 9:00 am we went to see Dr. Pegany, the clinic Doc and he sat with us for 45 minutes answering all our questions. He was not at all unsure about what we had. He was totally sure! We did however, fax the blood work to our Doctor, Mike Mathews, and he said he’d get back to us within the hour. He did, and confirmed the diagnosis. He told us he’d walk us thru the process and expedite things as quick as he could humanly do it. Both of these dear Doctors said they, “Knew someone, a specialist, and would make an appointment for us.”

We got a call later that day from Dr. Pegany’s office that our appointment with the specialist was November 21st. That’s the first day he could see us. Connie had an appointment down at the Plaza with a client that she didn’t want to cancel so, I drove her. This is where another God-thing happened. Connie didn’t want to wait until November 21st to deal with this. That was over 2 weeks!

She got on my cell as we were heading home from the plaza and called Dr. Mike’s office to see if HE had set up his appointment yet. The gal at the front desk said, “Mrs. Cardell, he called Dr. Belt but, he didn’t talk personally to him. Dr. Belt was seeing patients and is going out of town in two days. Mike will keep trying.” Here’s where I think God gave her boldness, she said, “Well, can I call him?”… The gal on the other end of the line said, “Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt”. She gave Connie the number.

Connie then called Dr. Belt’s office down here at St. Lukes. The gal at the desk said, “Well, he’s seeing patients right now and he doesn’t have any openings and he’s going on vacation shortly”… and Connie stopped her. She said, “Look, I was just diagnosed with Leukemia and I need to see someone. I don’t care if I have to sit in the lobby for his next cancellation or if I can see him on a coffee break. I’m willing too stay over night and to come back tomorrow if I have to.” The gal paused….and then she said….”What are you doing RIGHT NOW?” Connie said, “Right now?” She said, “Yes” Connie said, “I’m heading home from the Plaza, we had an appointment.” She said, “Turn around and get in here.” We did. Within 30 minutes of that call, we were in Dr. Belts capable hands and he had already examined her and looked over her charts and drawn blood. Yay God!!!

Although it wasn’t what we wanted to hear…he confirmed the diagnosis again. At this time, he went out and came back with Dr. McGuirk (Cons current doctor). He confirmed it as well. That’s 4 doctors that gave the same diagnosis. Dr. Mcguirk was awesome. He was aggressive. He wanted us to deal with it immediately. Dr. Belt wanted to schedule the bone marrow biopsy for Tues, afternoon. Dr. McGuirk said, “No no…I want her here at

9:00 a.m. and we can have the results by the afternoon!” Just what we needed. Con and I since observed that “Dr. McGuirk makes coffee nervous”. His aggressiveness was a comfort to us.

We got the biopsy done and it confirmed that we had the Acute type of leukemia and Dr. Abbott told us about it. That was another blow because, it was the fastest growing type. The Dr.s were surprised by that because Con had absolutely no symptoms. We later learned she had what was called BiPhenayl typical (sp?) leukemia. It is very rare and difficult to cure. With less than a 5% survival rate, we had to act fast!

Left untreated, she only had a few months to live.

They said we needed to begin to prepare for a long hospital stay. They said we needed to begin immediately. I said, “O.K. what are we talking about…like Thursday or Friday?” He said, “No… like 4:30 p.m. today!” So, we packed our bags and made sure the kids were covered and we drove down to St. Lukes.

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