While I Was Looking the Other Way…

Well, we may as well just jump right in.  This is not necessarily the direction I intended to go,  but this is typical of my life.

I have kind of thought since Friday that Ryan might need a blood or platelet transfusion, or both, but as it was a holiday weekend, and as I dislike our hospital’s emergency room, I decided to wait till today when the oncology clinic was open to have Ryan checked out.   My ACTUAL plan today was to go to therapy at our Candlelighters’ office, and go home and clean my apartment, as it looks like a tornado tore through because I have been largely nonfunctional the past 2 weeks due to my anxiety and depression.l

 

Yeah, well.  Candlelighters is near the hospital, and I had a few extra moments before I was due to pick up Ryan from my parents’ house, so I stopped by the hospital to tell the oncologist that Ryan was black and blue and I thought maybe he needed platelets, and so Dr. Bista was all go ahead and bring him RIGHT NOW, and told the (somewhat startled) nurse nearest to him to make an appointment for a CBC with a cross match RIGHT NOW.  And the nurse was like “with you?” and he told her yes and then she was scrambling because prior to my crashing the party she was just trying to WORK, thank you very much. So I called my dad and asked him to bring Ryan to the hospital, and then pretty much everybody was scrambling.  So Ryan got here, while I was worrying about his platelets everyone was all Oh My God he is white as a sheet!  So they drew him, and we got him all settled in.

Then after about half an hour the nurse who got her day brightened by being assigned not one but the TWO walk-in patients who walked in at the same time, told me that we were going to get both blood and platelets and that was when I asked for his counts and she said his Hemoglobin was 5.7.  Normal, for Ryan, is 14. At 7 its an automatic transfusion.  5.7 is incredibly low, and if you live in Cancerland, you just sorta burst out laughing, because this is a new low for us.  Platelets were 25,000, which is better than last week, when they were 13,000 (normal is at least 150,000…I think 11,000 is our record there).   So she is on the phone with the blood bank, and they tell her that there is a unit of blood in the house and they are going to cross match it and will call when it’s ready, so the nurse gets Ryan hooked up to his IV and gives him the medications he needs to pretreat against reactions. I ask about the platelets and there are none in-house, probably none in the city that are a match, so they will have to be flown in. Again. So we are getting his blood transfusion now, and then we will go home, with his port needle still in, and come back in the morning for the platelet transfusion.

Meanwhile, the oncologist wanders in, and I was all Ryan’s ANC is 27.  He points out that with these numbers we will not be starting LTM this week, which I already knew, and if I got $100 every time my medical instincts were on target I’d be independently wealthy.  Anyway I said that the ANC should  be starting to come up, because we have monos and segs and bands, and he is all you have A band.  ONE. And I said well ONE is more than ZERO, and he totally had to agree with me, because THAT’S JUST BASIC MATH, Dr. Bista.

So then I pointed out that Ryan is covered in bruises and I hoped no one who doesn’t know us sees all those bruises because they will call CPS on me, and he says that bruises are EXPECTED because Ryan has LEUKEMIA and I said that I thought this is a bit excessive, and he said that Ryan must have been very active this week and then I just stopped talking.  So he examined Ryan and said to come for the platelets tomorrow and then come back Monday for counts.  So then I asked for another set of labs in the morning, CBC and CMP, and he said why did I want a CMP and I said to check on Ryan’s kidney, and he just blinked at me.  He said we don’t need to check on his kidney every week and so I said then do we need a CBC and he said no but for me to remember that if Ryan runs a fever I have to take him to the ER and I said since his counts are so low couldn’t it just be an automatic admission and he said no and sighed very loudly.  And scrubbed at his face.  I was not TRYING to be difficult, but I like to WIN.

He left and went back to his office where he could beat his head against the wall in peace.  And I am now disassembling Ryan’s cheeseburger because it has to be fixed JUST SO…top bun and all vegetables removed and the rest torn (not cut) into bite-sized pieces.

We should be out of here in about half an hour, and then I have to go home and cook dinner for Shawn.

This is what happens when you look the other way for a second.