Thursday, March 24, 2011

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog post to bring you...

...a blood transfusion.

I'm not going to have my Thursday Five up until this afternoon/evening this week. I kinda ran out of time yesterday.

I went in for a scheduled appointment with my doctor yesterday afternoon. I've been having some issues with anemia because of the blood thinner that I take to prevent me from having another pulmonary embolism. So before I went in to see the doctor, I had to stop by the lab for bloodwork.

As I sat in the exam room waiting for the doctor, my nurse came in to put something into my chart on the computer. Another nurse was with her and she asked me, "Are you feeling okay? Are you tired or do you have a headache or anything?" I said, "Not any more tired than usual, I guess." "Oh, well some of your labs came back a little off, so I just wanted to make sure you're feeling okay." Then, they left. That made me kind of nervous because the last time I had labs that were "a little off" I ended up in the heart hospital for a week.

Finally, the doctor came in. She also asked me if I was feeling extra tired lately. I said, "Well, lately by 9:00, I'm ready to go to bed. That's kind of unusual for me." (all this time, I just thought it was age getting to me, so I hadn't worried about it). Her response was, "Well, if my counts were as low as yours, I would be crawling across this floor because I wouldn't be able to stand." She then informed me that I needed to get over to the hospital to get some blood because they needed to "pump me up."

So, Daniel and I dropped the kids off to Grandma Debbie and off we went. Because I use the Choctaw Clinic, I had to go to the Choctaw hospital-Choctaw is a Native American tribe, for those who didn't know that-which is an hour away. When I asked the doctor how long it would take, she said "a couple of hours," so we were thinking an hour there, 2-3 hours at the hospital, and and hour back. We left town around 5:15, so that would put us home around 10:00pm.

Of course, we didn't account for the hospital parking lot being under construction and having to walk all the way through the building to get to the ER. Or stopping to ask someone how to get to the ER and then having to walk all the way back through the building a different way to get there. Or getting to the ER and being told that we actually needed to go check in at medical/surgical and having to walk all the way back over there-only to find out that's where we had stopped to ask directions originally (always happens to me). I also didn't realize that they would have to draw more labs to type my blood and we would have to wait for that. Or that it takes a while to get the blood prepared. Once all of that it done, it takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours per unit and I was getting 2 units.

Poor Grandma Debbie, didn't know she was in for an all-nighter. :)

I'll spare you all the fun details, but I ended up getting poked by needles 6 times yesterday. Fun, right? And now, I have two units of someone else's blood pumping through my body. That's kind of a weird thought. We finally rolled out of there-literally, they wouldn't let me walk out-around 12:30. We got into bed around 2:ooam.

When my mom dropped the kids off this morning, she asked me how I was feeling. I said, "like I went to bed at 2 in the morning." We'll see how I feel in the morning after I actually get a full night's sleep.

So, now I've gotta go get the kids started on their schoolwork for today. We didn't get much done yesterday before we left for town (Landon went to the doctor yesterday too) so we've got some catching up to do. Hopefully, I'll be back for Thursday Five at lunch time or after school's done.

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