The Little Warrior
Chapter 1: Diagnosis
-April 2, 2007-
It's been a week since Risa's birthday and Rei and Yūichirou were getting ready for work. It was seven-thirty AM and Risa was still asleep, which was a little unusual for her. Still, her parents didn't worry, until Rei went to wake her.
She went into her daughter's room and gently shook her as she usually did, but the four-year-old didn't respond. Not sure if she was sick or not, she decided to race into the bathroom and grab the thermometer. She put the thermometer in the child's ear and a minute later, the device beeped. The display screen read '103.2°', sending her into a panic.
" Yūichirou!" She yelled, and he ran into the room to see her holding their daughter's unconscious form in her arms.
"What's wrong, Rei?" He asked with deep concern.
"I tried to wake her, but she won't wake up so I took her temperature and it's too high." She replied, sobbing.
"I'll call our bosses and let them know we have a family emergency and then I'll call Mamoru and have him meet us at the hospital. You take her to the car and I'll be there in a minute." He urged her. Rei nodded and carried Risa to the car as quickly as she could and buckled her in her car seat. Yūichirou came out a minute later and they sped to Jūban Hospital.
Mamoru met them in the Emergency Room and put Risa on one of the empty beds to examine her.
"When did she first become ill?" He asked them as he listened to her heart and lungs.
"Last night when I put her to bed. She said her stomach hurt and she felt tired. Earlier in the day, she fell off a swing at the park and I found a lot of bruises on her that weren't from the fall, but she told me she was fine, so I didn't think anything of it." Rei told him.
"Hmm...It's probably just a virus, but I'd like to run some tests just to be sure."
"What kinds of tests?" Yūichirou asked.
"For starters, I want to get a CBC. Then, depending on what those results show, we'll go from there."
"What are you suspecting?" Rei questioned.
"I'm not an expert on this, but I believe she may have leukemia." This hit Rei and Yūichirou like a ton of bricks. They had heard of leukemia before, but they never in a million years thought it would happen to their family.
Mamoru drew several tubes of blood and labeled them, then rushed them off to the lab to be tested. An hour later, the results were back and they were not what they were hoping for.
Another Doctor came into the room, holding a sheet of paper with the results. His body language and facial expression told the worried parents that something was terribly wrong.
"Hello, I'm Dr. Yoshida. I am the one in charge of Risa's care. May we talk?"
"What did the tests show?" Yūichirou inquired.
"The tests show that she has a very low red blood cell count, low platelets, and an extremely high number of white blood cells."
"What does that mean?" Yūichirou questioned him.
"Your daughter has leukemia." Rei immediately leaned her head against her husband's chest and cried as he ran his fingers through her silky black hair. Neither of them could believe it. Risa had always been so healthy.
"Will she be okay?" Rei asked him.
"I don't know which type she has, but I'll do more tests and when they come back, I'll start her on treatment immediately." The couple nodded and Dr. Yoshida admitted Risa to the Oncology floor to perform the tests.
Again, the family waited anxiously. When those results came back, they confirmed that Risa was suffering from Acute Myeloid Leukemia, subtype M3, also known as APL.
Dr. Yoshida handed Rei and Yūichirou information about her type of cancer and explained to them that APL was a very rare type of cancer in children and the treatment for it would be different from the other AML subtypes, but the chance of survival was in her favor.
That evening, Risa woke up and found herself in a strange and unfamiliar room, hooked up to a bunch of wires and an IV which was dripping her first dose of chemotherapy drugs into her veins. She wailed and cried loudly until her mother put her arms around her to comfort her.
"It's alright, Risa-chan. Mama's here."
"What is this place? It's scary. I want to go home." Risa said tearfully, her entire body trembling as she tried to pull out the IV.
"I know you do, sweetie, but you need to stay here for a little while so you can get better."
"No! I wanna go home right now! Take me home!"
"I wish I could, but if I take you home now, you will get sicker." Rei hesitated to tell her about the leukemia. She hated to lie to her, but she didn't know if the little girl would understand or how she would react.
"Why am I sick, Mama?"
"You remember when you told me you were tired, right? Well, there are millions of tiny things in your body called cells and the bad cells are fighting all the good ones and trying to make you sick."
"Will I be okay?"
"The Doctors here are gonna give you medicine to make the bad cells go away and the good cells come back and then you will get better again."
"Okay. How long do I have to be here?"
"I don't know, baby. That's up to Dr. Yoshida and his nurses. When they see that the medicine is working, they'll let you go home.
"I hope I get better soon. I wanna go to the Hello Kitty store and get that drawing thing."
"I know you do. How about I ask Papa to bring my laptop and your gift card with him when he comes back in the morning and you can go on their website to order it?"
"Yeah!" Risa stretched and let out a yawn. "Mama, can you read me a story right now? I wanna go back to sleep."
"Sure, kiddo." Rei reached into her overnight bag and pulled out Risa's favorite book and began to read. By the time she got to the fifth or sixth page, Risa had fallen asleep.
"Goodnight, Risa-chan." Rei kissed her goodnight and whispered 'I love you', then she bowed her head and prayed. "Please, Kami-sama. Make my daughter well again."
A little short, but hope you like it anyway. Next chapter should be up sooner. In case you are wondering, I got the information about Risa's cancer from google and from reading blogs.