just fell on my knees and cried… I just wanted to save my son’|[12/24/06].

The diagnosis struck like lightning, and the chance for survival for little Joshua Berney was merely a glimmer: It was leukemia, and his doctors knew better than to offer too much hope.

That was a month ago.

Today, the 7-month-old son of Ernest and Ginger Berney is spending Christmas weekend with his grateful family at Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children with plans of coming home to Vicksburg in the next few days.

The tubes and wires have been removed from his tired little body and he’s playing, talking and taking milk from a bottle again.

His cancer is in remission.

&#8220We believe that God put Joshua through this test to touch the lives of so many people,” Ernest Berney said at the hospital last week. &#8220We believe prayers healed him. My greatest Christmas present is having my son here.”

Joshua had been hospitalized since Nov. 22, after doctors at River Region Medical Center ran blood tests that showed he had the illness. He was immediately transferred to the specialized center at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

&#8220At one point, I just fell on my knees and cried,” Ernest Berney said. &#8220I just wanted to save my son. We were both in tears.”

Leukemia is a cancer of the blood or bone marrow and is characterized by an abnormal proliferation of blood cells, usually white blood cells, or leukocytes. It is part of the broad group of diseases called hematological neoplasms.

Damage to bone marrow, by displacing the normal marrow cells with increasing numbers of malignant cells, results in a lack of blood platelets, which are important in the blood clotting process. This means people with leukemia may become bruised or bleed internally. For medical science, it is an awesome and complicated foe.

The diagnosis hit the Berneys hard. About a week earlier, they had taken Joshua to the hospital for what they thought was a cold. He had never been sick.

&#8220The doctor said he would be fine by that Monday,” Ernest Berney said. &#8220But he got worse, so we called the doctor and they said to give him Benadryl and Motrin. We gave him those and he was playful and more alert.”

But it didn’t last. On the day before Thanksgiving, Joshua’s pediatrician did a blood test and sent him home. She called the Berneys that night with troubling news.

&#8220We went home about 5 and an hour later, the doctor called and said the blood looks strange and told us to go to the emergency room. They admitted him right away.”

By 11:30 p.m., the happy little baby with a cold was under intensive care at Batson and his parents were bewildered beyond imagination.

&#8220I was upset with God and asked him how he could do this,” Ernest Berney said. &#8220We just wanted to hold Joshua and comfort him, but it hurt him for us to hold him.”

The next morning, on Thanksgiving Day, doctors took Joshua’s parents into a consultation room.

&#8220They said he had acute lymphocytic leukemia, that he was very sick and that he may not live,” Ernest Berney said. &#8220They said it was going to be very tough for him.”

About 3,930 new cases of acute lymphocytic leukemia are diagnosed each year in the United States. It is the most common type of leukemia for people under 19, and children are most likely to develop the disease.

The cause is not known.

The doctors were right about Joshua’s difficult path. Over the past month, Joshua has suffered bleeding in his brain that let to clots and then to seizures. Medication after medication was pumped into his body. Tubes and wires were everywhere. He was dehydrated. His white blood cell counts were too high. Countless tests were conducted. Moment by moment. Hour by hour. Day by day.

&#8220The leukemia was causing his blood vessels to burst and he was having seizures,” Ernest Berney said. Medicines required to stopped the bleeding resulted in clots. &#8220All of a sudden, we had to turn our focus from leukemia to saving his brain.”

On Nov. 27, doctors removed one of three blood clots in Joshua’s brain and stabilized the other two. Magnetic resonance imaging later showed at least 100 other instances of bleeding, but doctors expected those to heal on their own.

&#8220The blood clots are basically gone,” Ernest Berney said. &#8220He had a stroke from the hemorrhage. But the leukemia, we were told yesterday, is in remission. He’s made remarkable recoveries. I feel like we have our son back.”

His recovery has been so remarkable, in fact, that doctors told the Berneys they could take their son home Saturday. They decided to wait until after Christmas.

&#8220Since we have to be back up here next week, we decided to just stay,” he said.

Ernest Berney, a research engineer for Waterways Experiment Station, said Blair E. Batson has been his home for the past month.

&#8220I’ve been off work the whole time, and have only been back home two or three times,” he said. Waterways &#8220has told me to take care of my son.”

The Berneys have also had support from family, fellow members of New Vision Family Worship Center, friends and from strangers.

&#8220We’ve received calls and cards from people we don’t even know, from all over the country,” Ernest Berney said. &#8220On Thanksgiving Day, a church that had heard about Joshua brought us Thanksgiving dinner. And this hospital has been great.”

Blair E. Batson opened in 1997. The 130-bed hospital specializes in physical therapy, infant care, treatment rooms, bone marrow transplantation, a pediatric pharmacy, the state’s only pediatric intensive care unit and patient classrooms and activity rooms.