Headaches

Oh my, Clara Jean is having headaches again. For about two weeks now she has been complaining pretty much non-stop that her head hurts. Truthfully, I was ignoring her, blowing it off. Maybe it was a defense mechanism on my part. But on Monday her teacher called me to come get her from school. CJ had been complaining about her head hurting and was feeling really tired. I told Mrs. Heep that she has been complaining of her head hurting a lot and she said, "yes, she has." So not only is she complaining to me, but she is complaining at school. I called Dr. Whitlock's office.

When the nurse called me back she told me to take her to the pediatrician and have her checked out to rule out other causes before our next chemo treatment on Monday. She also said to have her blood pressure checked. Sometimes steroids can cause high blood pressure and high blood pressure can cause headaches.

I called Nurse Molly at school and asked her if she could check CJ's blood pressure. She did and it was fine. Then I called Dr. Mangrum's office and made an appointment.

This morning we went to see Dr. Mangrum. He checked her out from head to toe. Nothing. No signs of a sinus infection, ear infection, migraines. He recommended that she be scanned again. I asked him what the chances of the disease coming back, during her chemo treatments. He reminded me that nothing about this disease, and more specifically, nothing about Clara's treatment, has been typical. Now remember, her last CT was clear. But LCH is is fast and sneaky. So that makes me nervous. Also, the scans can be clear even after symptoms present themselves. So she could have pain and a clear scan but then a month later a tumor shows up.

Please pray for her. Clara is terrified. In fact, it wasn't until yesterday that she told me that the pain is mostly right in the spot where the tumor was. She said that she was too scared to tell me. She keeps asking me these "what if" questions and I am doing a decent job with my standard answer. We deal with what we know and give the worries to God.