Daddy and the E-man had their first doctor’s appointment without Mom today. I picked him up from daycare and walked over to the hospital where we met with the hematologist. As usual, his defense mechanism lit up as soon as I walked in the door - a full and messy diaper. After that was fixed, then it was off to the phlebotomist where we got blood drawn. After a first attempt in his arm, and then a second attempt in his foot, they finally found a good spot on his scalp (which isn’t as bad as it sounds - it hurts him less, isn’t sore afterwards, and was an easy and quick stick). Poor guy, he hated every minute of it and let us know it. I can’t imagine how much it hurt to have them looking for the vein. It’s so barbaric to use a sharpened piece of hollow metal to get at our blood. Sounds like the middle ages.
The doctor, who graduated from the same department I’m doing my graduate work in, had me look at the microscope slide of the E-man’s blood with him. I got to keep it afterwards too; here are a few pictures:

The circles are all red blood cells:

The clumping in the middle here are platelets:

And here are two types of white blood cells:

In the first picture, his red blood cells should be filled with hemoglobin, not hollow like they are. It turns out that he has iron-deficiency anemia, and the doctor prescribed an iron supplement to fix the problem.

I’m so relieved that it was a simple problem with a simple fix. Sitting there in the Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorder Center, seeing other children of all ages getting cancer treatments, made me appreciate our healthy and happy boy even more. How is it that one child gets sick and another doesn’t? Who decides? The best thing the parent of a healthy child can do is appreciate that very fact. And we do.