I thought things were a bit strange over the last week or so. Over the weekend following the last chemo session, I slept almost the entire day. I didn't eat or drink much so I became extremely dehydrated. I went in on Wednesday last week to get my labs drawn and mentioned to them I was feeling a bit light-headed. I got a call from the nurse the next day telling me that I was "dry". They told me to come into Ellis on Friday to receive some IV fluids to rehydrate me. I got one liter of fluids and had planned to wait until the results came back before I left in case I needed more. After almost an hour, the nurse said that I didn't need to worry about it and she de-accessed the port and sent me home.
About 15 minutes after my brother dropped me off, I got a call from the nurse in my doctor's office telling me that I needed to go to women's and children's hospital to get a blood transfusion. If it had been earlier in the day, I might have been able to get it done at Ellis, but since it was already after 3pm, there was no way it could be done there. I left a message for my brother to come back and get me and the fun all began again. He had just got home from dropping me off (he lives 10 miles from me) so he had to come back out and get me and drive me back into town. He dropped me off at the hospital around 4:30 and I went into the check-in desk and they had no information on why I was there so they told me to go wait until they got my information. They finally got me checked in about 5pm.
After doing the paperwork, they sent for someone to wheel me up to my assigned room. Because they had already de-accessed my port, it meant that they had to stick me again in order to even draw blood to do they type and cross-match so I was given the choice of doing the stick with numbing (which would have delayed everything by an hour) or doing it without so they could get started right away. I went ahead and did it without because I had already been delayed this long. It really didn't hurt as bad as it had been the last several times that they had done it without the cold spray, but the hospital didn't use the cold spray. Oh well...
Once they got the blood drawn, they hooked me up to another liter of fluid that they put in twice as fast as they put the first one in at Ellis. After an hour, they hooked up another bag that they had running all night. Around 8pm the hooked up the first pint of blood and about 2 hours later they hooked up the second. All the blood was in by midnight and I was actually allowed to sleep until they came and drew blood from my port for labs. I think as far as sleeping in a hospital, that was the best night sleep I had ever had since they didn't need to keep poking me every time they needed blood or something.
I went home around noon on Saturday, but I still didn't feel totally great. I'm still afraid to drive the car because there are still times I feel light-headed. I just hope that things start getting better or I may need to move closer to town sooner than I had hoped to. More to come later!
No comments:
Post a Comment