When lightning strikes out of the clear blue sky

My sister’s 6-year-old son has leukemia. He was diagnosed on Tuesday, when he just went for a blood test at a hematology center because he’d been pale for a few weeks and seemed to have a slightly strange kind of anemia on a blood test he my sister got for him at her regular pediatrician just by-the-way when she took one of her other sons for a checkup. The doctor couldn’t make heads or tails of the test results so she sent them on to a hematologist at one of the good Budapest children’s hospitals.

So two weeks later (on Tuesday) some more blood is taken, an hour or so later they’re told of the results, my nephew is told he’ll have to stay in the hospital overnight (he flips out over this) and then probably for a month or two (which doesn’t even register with him) once they confirm their suspicions with a bone marrow biopsy and spinal tap the next day.

Sadly, suspicions were confirmed. That was on Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon he began chemo. Thursday morning the oncologist told my sister about the long-term treatment plan and full diagnosis. My nephew will recover, my sister’s 6th sense was right on and he hadn’t even begun to get sick: the cancer hadn’t spread anywhere outside the bone marrow yet. But it will be a long road, with endless rounds of chemotherapy and baldness and no going to school and living in the hospital much of the time – for maybe two years.

My head spins. I can’t even begin to imagine how much my sister’s head is spinning. And my heart is breaking that I’m so far away from her.