Adventures in Blood Work

This morning, Mom, Will and I headed over to NorthEast hospital for Mom to get her blood work done. At first, they wanted to take the blood from her arm, but Mom wanted them to take it from her central line (Hickman) instead, in order to reduce chance of infection. They called someone from the IV team to come down to the lab to help. They were able to get the lab work, but part of her Hickman is clogged with a blood clot. NorthEast placed a call over to Duke to find out what to do and we waited, and waited and waited.

We thought this was going to be a short visit, so were totally unprepared. Mom left her notebook at home. I didn't bring the diaper bag, Will's toys or his little potty chair. His sippy cup was in the car. He was thirsty, hungry and didn't know what to do with his energy.

Finally, we all ended up going to the cafeteria to grab a bite while we waited for Duke to call back. That was great because he finally got a giant bottle of water and some food. He could be a little noisy, run around a bit or climb up and down off the chairs at the table.

Eventually, we headed back to the lab only to find out they still hadn't found out anything. We hadn't heard anything on my cell either. Mom got out her phonebook and made a call to the nurse in charge of her case in the clinical trial. The nurse called another nurse over at the bone marrow transplant center, who called us back on my phone. She said to go home and then to see if it's still clogged on Wednesday. If it is, the clog will be addressed on that day instead of today. I hope that all works out because Will is set to start the very first day of his music class that day at 11:30. Sounds like we'll have to start out early in the morning to make sure.  So anyway, after four hours of waiting around, we finally got to go home.

I'm going to grab a nap until Allen gets home. Our sweet friend Manisha is getting dinner for us tonight (thank you!) so we won't have to think about that tonight and that will make life easier. I look forward to putting my feet up a little. :-)