Thursday transfusion 9-18

Warning: don't read if you are squeamish. Today did not start out well. My mouth & gums kept bleeding all night and big gloppy clots kept forming. That's pretty disgusting. Plus I don't have enough blood to spare. So I slept off ond on last night, propped up on the sofa. In the wee hours you wonder stuff, like, could a person bleed to death like this? So I was somewhat stressed by the time we got to CCI this morning. They had a hard time getting a needle inserted. First on the inside of my arm, I kept bleeding out under the skin because my platelets are so low. And that spot was really burning a lot. They finally got a line in my inner elbow, but it didn't feel right either. The saline ran OK, but when they started the red cells, it bled out, too. Mike told them don't talk to me about what was going on, because I didn't want to hear it. And he was absolutely right. I never want to hear any of that stuff. I'M SQUEAMISH. So I got a Hemi-Sync meditation going on my iPod with noise blocking earbuds and disassociated myself from reality. Another nurse came to try to redo the line and she was able to get it in the top of my hand after a few minutes. From some other state I knew that one was going to be OK.

Mike normally goes and stays with me the whole time when I am getting transfusions. But he had meetings scheduled today before we knew I'd be getting blood. He wanted to change the meetings, but I told him I would sleep and be fine. Of all days for the line to have trouble. After the hand stick and I knew it would be OK, I got him to go ahead and go to his meetings. I went to sleep from the Benadryl and no other problems came with the red cells. He got back just after they had started the second unit. But then it was time for platelets and there were no platelets. Lots of times the main blood centre holds platelets till the afternoon because of surgeries scheduled at hospitals and such. The CCI people were calling afternoon appointments, telling them not to come because there weren't any platelets today. YIKES. Platelets were what I really needed most. They were getting ready to turn me loose, but Mike told them we weren't leaving till I got some platelets. (Nicely, of course.) There must have been some kind of mix-up or mis-communication. When they went and checked my blood counts from yesterday and found out how low mine were, the main centre did finally release some platelets for me and sent them over. That was a delay of about another hour.

But now I am happy to say that I am home, safe and sound. My mouth is still sore, but not bleeding. That's a wonderful improvement. And The DISH came in today's mail. I'm about to go enjoy reading it.