The nurse on the telephone sounded urgent.

"We've sent your daughter's blood work over to a specialist. He wants to see her today. As soon as possible."

My daughter had been diagnosed the day before as anemic, after several medical tests. Anemia runs in the family, for reasons unknown. We figured that, like my lovely spouse, she would just have to take iron pills to boost her hemoglobin.

"What did you find?" my wife asked.

The nurse explained that her hemoglobin and hematocrit were both low, but hinted that there were 'other factors' of concern.

The specialist didn't want to see her until 1:00. It was only nine in the morning. My daughter was already at school, completely unaware of what was happening. I wished I could say the same.

Like any distraught and concerned parent, I immediately turned to that know-it-all resource for all things medical, the internet, for information. What I read didn't comfort me. Among the potential causes for her condition were disorders with dreaded names like leukemia, and multiple myeloma. What I read stoked my deepest fears.

I picked up my daughter around noon, and drove into the big city to our north, to the huge medical center there. We made our way to the seventh floor. I had only told her that there were some things in her blood tests that a doctor wanted to check out, and that it was probably nothing more than anemia. She's a smart kid, though, and when she saw the words Children's Specialty Clinic and Oncology Center, and then saw all the bald kids playing in the waiting room, she figured out what was up right away. Then she saw her mother waiting for us, and she became really worried. That made three of us.

The doctor asked dozens of family history questions - who had heart disease, who had cancer (that word I dreaded), who had diabetes. The interview and examination went on for only a few seconds less than the cretacious period.

Then the doctor took blood, did a clotting test, and finally announced his concerns.

He was worried about Von Willbrands Disease. I had never heard of Von Willbrands Disease. Apparently it's a form of atypical hemophilia, that ebbs and flows. You can bop along perfectly content, clotting like a son of a gun, for years maybe, and then incur a minor injury during an ebb in clotting factors and bleed to death just like that. The doctor talked about a case he had worked with a Vietnam vet who had been shot several times, gone through evac, a MASH unit, and then had undergone heart surgery years later, all without incident. Then he had minor hernia surgery and almost bled out on the table.

The treatment? Get this - iron tablets for the anemia, and a nasal spray. And that's only if she actually has it. We won't know for another week. We can wait.

That's it. No leukemia. No multiple myeloma. No dreaded chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants and prolonged illness and praying for a remission. My daughter is going to be perfectly fine.

At the checkout desk, we wrote out a check for the examination, and I was stowing the checkbook as a woman pushed her son up to the window. He was hairless and bloated and flushed from chemo, and he retched into an emesis tray he carried in his lap. I tried to smile at them with something that resembled hope, but deep down I only felt relief.

That night, I slipped into bed with my wife, and I held her close, and I told her we had been given a mitzvah. She said she knew. A single telephone call and four hours of waiting had taken a year or two off our lives, but we were able to sleep peacefully, grateful for the best Christmas present we could have ever received.