Background

I've had a few people ask me about Sawyer's initial symptoms and how we ended up where we are:

Sawyer started not feeling good at the beginning of October. Mark had just come down with the typical change of the season head cold and we figured Sawyer had picked it up. He stayed home from school a couple days but then went back and continued to play soccer (although as time went by he didn't really have the energy or feel well enough). He never had any cold symptoms (congestion, cough, sneezing) nor any intestinal problems like diarrhea. He was tired, somewhat nauseous, hungry but not really feeling like eating, and had a low grade fever. He started sleeping more and losing energy, and being cold more than usual.
Mark took him to the doctor for a check up last Friday because he wasn't getting better and I was tired of him not having his stomach feel good. He was losing some weight as well, but he wasn't eating.
His doctor (Andy Call) told us to take him to the hospital to have blood drawn, which happened on Monday. The red flag was that his white blood cell count was extremely low. Dr. Call called us Monday night with those initial results and said he was working to get us an appointment in Rochester.
We came up to Rochester for a Wednesday morning appointment, they did another blood test and his white cell count had dropped even lower. Other blood counts were normal (platelets and red cells). The doctor thought is might be leukemia but the only way to tell for sure was to look at the bone marrow, which they did and further tests told us what type.
We are very grateful to Dr. Call for picking up on enough clues to have a blood test done, and not sending Sawyer home to wait it out. It will make a big difference to Sawyer's recovery to have him being otherwise healthy and catching this early.