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Sarah Fox-Hodges hasn?t been outside to breathe fresh air in more than a month.

Confined to the Oncology Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Jewish Hospital, the Mason resident and 2001 Kings High graduate — and the school?s all-time leading scorer in basketball — has been in a hospital bed since she was admitted into Cincinnati?s Christ Hospital emergency room Feb. 24.

Hodges, who was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia March 1, also is 25 weeks pregnant with her first child, a girl.

But through it all, Hodges has been, for the most part, in good spirits.

?I?m getting prayers from all over,? Hodges, 24, said. ?The biggest thing is that people have been so supportive.?

Hodges? room is covered with photos, get-well cards and drawings. And when her husband, Shaun, arrives at their Mason home, he often finds meals left on their doorstep.

?We have so many who?ve helped us out,? said Kim Fox, Sarah?s mother. ?People have carried us through this. It?s amazing we?re not falling to pieces. We have our moments where we break down. Other than that, we?re doing a great job because so many people are praying for us and bringing meals. I can?t say enough about the people that have helped us.?

On Tuesday, Sarah?s white blood cell count and absolute neutrophil count climbed to 2.3 and 1.2, respectively, and indications are she will be able to come home this weekend.

?This is just the beginning, with the baby coming,? Kim said. ?It will be nice for her to go home, but she?s so safe in the hospital.?

At 1:40 p.m. Friday, Sarah Fox-Hodges was scheduled to fly out of Cincinnati with her husband, Shaun, and 5-year-old step-son, Kyle, for a weeklong vacation on Sanibel Island.

But what happened on Feb. 24 nixed their plans — and will change their lives forever.

Minor surgery turns serious

Sarah was admitted into Christ Hospital's emergency room the afternoon of Feb. 24 following complications — severe bleeding, high fever, vomiting — from surgery four days earlier to repair an anal fissure.

For a month prior, the Mason resident dealt with pain and thought it was just hemorrhoids, a common occurrence during pregnancy.

Sarah — a 2001 Kings High grad and the school's all-time leading scorer in basketball — became pregnant in early October, and believed this was only a hiccup along the way. But it was much worse than that.

"I thought it'd get fixed, and there'd be a week of recovery. I'd be back to normal and enjoy the rest of the pregnancy. I never, ever imagined this for someone my age." Sarah said.

Once in the ER, blood tests — three, in fact — revealed that the 24-year-old Mason resident had severe deficiency in her blood counts, particularly in her white blood cells, which prevent her from healing.

Doctors believed it was a blood infection, and Sarah was placed into the Surgical Intensive Care Unit around 10 p.m. Isolated in a room where she and the baby could be monitored closely, Sarah had six IVs running through her.

"They couldn't treat me as a normal person because I was pregnant," Sarah said. "It was a very rare and abnormal situation."

For the next five days, more tests, including a bone marrow biopsy, were conducted to determine what had stricken Sarah. As each test came back negative, it was marked off the checklist — until it was learned that Sarah had acute promyelocytic leukemia.

Treatment begins

After dinner on March 1, Sarah received the news that she had APL, and the next morning, she was transferred from Christ to Jewish Hospital.

Chemotherapy treatments through an IV began that same day, and lasted for a week. Sarah also had a second surgery for her fissure once she got to Jewish.

"It was a piece of cake, the first week," said Sarah, who had her head shaved March 20. "I was nauseous from the pregnancy and chemo, but my only pain was from the surgery. (Last) Thursday was one of my worst days. I have my good days and my bad days."

The second round of chemo will be sometime this month as an outpatient, while the third round will take place in June. For the next two years, Sarah will have to take ATRA pills, which will help future cells mature and grow normally.

While the odds are in Sarah's favor — a 90 percent success rate — she didn't hide the fact that death has entered her mind.

"I leave it in the hands of God," Sarah said. "It's all in God's plan."

The baby

Sarah's main concern through this whole ordeal has been the baby. She reached the 25-week milestone on Monday, and her and Shaun are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their first child together, a girl.

A cesarean section will be scheduled between 32 and 34 weeks, and will be done at either Christ or Good Samaritan.

The exact date won't be known until Sarah's blood cell counts are high enough — enabling her to recover and heal from the C-section — but it will more than likely be around the end of May.

To Sarah's advantage, though, is that her OB/GYN doctors visit her nearly every day at Jewish. She has a Doppler next to her bed that allows her to check her daughter's heart rate any time she wants.

"It makes me at ease," Sarah said. "I'm so thankful that the OBs check on her every day. It will be a big relief when I have my C-section and she's OK."

Because the leukemia was detected during the second trimester, the baby was strong enough to withstand the first round of chemo. If it occurred during the first trimester, the prospects of the baby surviving would have decreased.

Life at the hospital

Doctors have encouraged Sarah, who hasn't been outside for more than a month, to live as normal as a life as possible despite being confined to the Oncology Bone Marrow Transplant Unit.

Shaun bought her a laptop — the hospital has wireless access — to give Sarah the opportunity to check her Care Page often. About 300 messages have been left on it for Sarah, and her hospital room is covered with get-well cards and drawings taped to the wall.

Sarah can wear regular clothes instead of a hospital gown, and she's able to walk around the floor three times a day to get exercise.

The television — "Grey's Anatomy" and "CSI" are her favorite shows — and crossword puzzles help pass the time, but it is her family and caretakers that she leans on the most. Sarah's college coach, Campbell's Wanda Watkins, drove down from Cleveland last week to visit.

Sarah and Shaun, 37, wed Dec. 7 of last year, and Shaun, as a senior director of sales and marketing for DHL, is fortunate to have a flexible schedule that allows him to do a lot of work at the hospital.

After Kyle arrives at Latchkey in the morning, Shaun heads over to the hospital. With him is not only his laptop, but drawings from Kyle for Sarah because visitors have to be at least 14 years old.

"I've been lucky. I've had a lot of visitors, family and friends," Sarah said. "The nurses and doctors have made a big difference. I live here. It's nice being surrounded by people who make me comfortable."

But through it all, Sarah can't help but ask herself a question: Why me?

"On the harder days, it's easier to feel sorry for myself," Sarah said. "I'm lucky because I have something that can be cured, and I have friends and family around who care."

The family

Sarah's father, Phil, can only watch his oldest child suffer.

"You wish you could take her place," he said. "You feel helpless because you'd much rather have yourself in pain and agony. Sarah's only beginning her life."

Along with her mother, Kim, Sarah's siblings — sisters Lauren, 21, and Sam, 20, and brother Phil, 15 — have all been right by her side, even spending the night at the hospital.

"It's been a joint effort," Kim said. "Everybody pitches in. She feels better when somebody's there."

Sam also is dealing ovarian cancer, which was diagnosed two weeks ago, and had a cyst removed the same week Sarah's leukemia was discovered. Sam is 24 weeks pregnant with her second child.

"Sometimes I sit back and laugh, and say, 'Can you believe this is happening?' " Kim said. "It's overwhelming. It's unexplainable that we're not breaking down and falling to pieces. We take each day and we get through it."

"An event like this wakes up you," Shaun said. "Whereas before, when somebody doesn't go through something like this, it's easy to have too much of an emphasis on work or whatever your thing may be, but not enough emphasis on family, friends, loved ones."

From Shaun's perspective, the outreach from friends and community members, particularly from their church — Grace Chapel in Mason — has been overwhelming. Meals have been left in the Hodges' refrigerator in their garage, and at their doorstep in coolers and bags.

"It just shows me how many good people there are out there that you don't realize, or I didn't realize until you need them," Shaun said. "You don't know until something happens, and then you're just surrounded by caring, Christian people. It's been amazing.

"I hope to be able to repay somebody sometime in the same kind of way."

What's next

Sarah's white blood cell count Tuesday morning was 2.3, the highest since she's been in the hospital. That figure was up from Monday's 1.7, Sunday's 1.6 and Friday's 1.0. Normally, a person's WBC count is between 4,500 and 10,000. Also on Tuesday, her absolute neutrophil count was at 1.2, doubling from Monday's 0.6.

Sarah's WBC count was 0.3 when she was in the ER, and during the past month had been in the 0.4 to 0.7 range. Because her WBC and ANC continue to increase, the possibility exists that Sarah could come home as soon as this weekend.

"We're nervous about it," Kim said. "There's no way she'll get the care like she did at the hospital. She's nervous and we're nervous. But on the other hand, she wants to come home. We will do everything to get her comfortable. We trust everything's going well. We have a very strong faith.

"We can't wait. We're so excited."

Contact this reporter at (513) 755-5113 or smatthews@coxohio.com.