For the last month or so, Blaise has been complaining of intermittent leg pain, waking up at night in pain, and with a limp that would range from excruciatingly painful to barely noticeable. We went to the emergency room Saturday, January 16, 2016 when Blaise woke up in uncontrollable leg pain and was refusing to bare weight. We were seen and discharged quickly we a diagnosis of Transient Synovitis- a benign inflammation of the joints that goes away with time, a little motrin here and there and he will be fine.
Monday, January 18th, the limp was worse, the pain was worse. Our pediatrician sent us back to the emergency room- labs were checked and an ultrasound was completed- his inflammatory markers were slightly elevated but borderline- the team was suspicious for a septic arthritis but the ultrasound showed no fluid. We were offered an MRI, but were reluctant to give him sedation if this was truly a Transient Synovitis, which the team thought it was. So, we were sent home with instructions to give motrin every 6 hours for one week. Our pediatrician recommended follow up with Orthopedics outpatient in 1 week.
Tuesday, January 22nd, we went to CHOP King of Prussia's Ortho clinic. The Doctor we saw agreed that his walk was asymmetrical- we made a plan to check labs and if they were still off to get an MRI. His white blood cell count remained high upon recheck of labs. An MRI was scheduled for January 26th at CHOP Voorhees (I shopped around to all the outpatient sites!)
Andrew took Blaise to MRI and they left without issue. I remember sitting at work asking a co-worker when we would get results. They said, "if it's bad, they'll call you tonight". Around 5:30 that night, we got a call from CHOP saying the MRI lit up in his bone marrow- and we needed to go the the Emergency Room. They said they think this is an osteomyelitis- and they had very low suspicion for malignancy. I met Andrew and Blaise in the Emergency Room and we were admitted for the OR tomorrow to drain the infection and start antibiotics.
Surgery took longer than we thought- the surgeon, came out and told us "the tissue surrounding the lesion looked normal- and there was nothing that looked infectious." Immediately I became concerned. After a long four days of waiting for pathology, hoping for positive cultures, we learned Blaise had cancer.
We want to stop here and take a moment to thank our original orthopedic surgeon. Apparently the CHOP ortho team was split on how to proceed with Blaise- some thought the collection in his leg looked small on MRI and surgery wouldn't be needed- just give antibiotics for six weeks and watch him. The surgeon that "on" that weekend wanted to go in and check things out- and because of that, we have a diagnosis and an exceptionally early one, which I feel very strongly will be a big reason why we will have a happy ending.
