Check please!

Big fat reality check that is.
Do you ever have those moments where everything comes screaming at you in super speed? Kind of like in a movie and it's a big picture that zooms right in tight on someone's face?

I don't like those moments.

Well, I do when they turn out well.

I got an unsettling call from our pediatrician a couple of weeks ago. We had taken Jacob in to have some huge lymph nodes checked out. His throat was pretty darn awful looking, so we did a strep test, but since that was negative, he wanted to do a blood test just to rule out a few other things. He wondered about EBV, and joked about the possibility of TB since we're known for wild vacations to Honduras and we have an exotic South American maid. (ha ha) He then mentioned that it could come from a cat scratch as well, and since Jacob-despite his allergies-has a fondness for picking up the neighbor's cat on the way to and from school, we thought we'd check TB just to be safe. Being the great dr that he is, he did one of his rare in-office blood draws so that we could avoid the whole lab at the hospital. (it's a small office, just him, so he doesn't do a ton of extras there in his office on a regular basis)

It was a little surprising then when my phone rang the very next day and I was greeted with, "Well, the good news is that it looks like we can pretty safely rule out leukemia." Pardon?? "Yep, thankfully his CBC came back perfect, so that's great!" Well I should say so. Thankfully it was a gentle little smack in the face. I can't imagine what it would have been had he been sharing the opposite news. It also made me glad that he hadn't mentioned that before the blood draw.

Today we found ourselves back in his office again, this time for Charlotte's 4 month check up. We still hadn't heard back on the EBV screen, so I asked him about it while we were there. He went and gathered everything and proceeded to go over all of the labs with me. Everything looks absolutely perfect, all of the screens came back negative. Yay! But as I was reveling in the good news, I had a bit more news of the sobering type. I could actually see the relief on the dr's face as he turned to me and said, "you know, I'm really very very glad that his cbc came back so good. I was really quite positive that it wasn't going to. I was preparing for the very worst, I was quite certain that's what we were facing."

wow.

Yes, it was unnerving to find a number of lumps in the side of my 5yr old's neck, especially just weeks after my brother-in-law underwent surgery for very invasive cancer that was discovered through a lump in his neck. I suppose the possibility of the worst always crosses your mind, but like every other parent, I instantly began hoping for, and thinking only of, the very best. I realize that, sadly, not everyone gets the news that we did. I ache for those parents who are faced with the other side of what test results bring. I can't imagine how that must feel, and pray I never will know that.

So tonight I find myself extremely grateful for this and other recent events that are a very specific reminder that prayers are answered. It may not always be exactly when or how we might think they should be, sometimes we luck out and it goes that way, but even when it doesn't happen in our time frame or how we might have wanted it, it still happens. Don't ever doubt that.