Well, another 324 miles down. And, I might need to adjust my total anticipated mileage to account for some changes. Will explain shortly.
So, down our beaten path to Nashville today went as scheduled and carried a couple of surprises. We first saw Drew’s hematologist, Dr. Y. The kind-in-manner but torturous-in-profession nurses were requested to take some blood. Drew was gleefully unaware of our agenda right up until we crossed the threshold into that all-too-familiar room and he immediately whined in protest. “Aaawww maaaaaaaaan!!” he whined. Poor thing. And, as we walked closer to the same bed on which he’s been pricked dozens of times in his small little life, his whines escalated.
I recall the first time that we had Drew on this very same bed to do his very first transfusion. He wasn’t a couple of weeks old and Nathan and I stood by the side of the bed while the nurses squeezed and analyzed Drew’s feet for a vein. As they stuck him, he screamed. I was absolutely inconsolable. I couldn’t breath I was so hysterically crying. To watch my son and try to imagine from his new eyes how the sights of these huge creatures inflicting pain upon him must have been like was unbearable. I have thicker skin now, but I’m no less sad inward as Drew writhes in pain.
Needle prick done and over with, we headed back to the Dr.’s office to await the results and were greeted with this:
- Not a movie still from “Psycho”
Drew’s bandaid just wasn’t enough to contain the geyser of blood from his tiny little pinprick of his new “boo-boo.” Yes, guys, this is Thrombocytapenia for you. Oh, the joys of low platelets. As you may know, lower platelets means slower process of clotting blood therefore more blood than would be expected, but with Drew, he tends to stop bleeding fairly quickly, he just excessively bleeds during those few short seconds. Nathan’s shirt is currently soaking in bleach. I did joke to Nathan that should Drew go missing, he was going to be in a crap load of trouble after the CSI discovered this blood on his shirt so I thought that I better snap a picture so CSI could verify that the timestamp of this picture matches a scheduled blood test at the hospital. And, in addition, including this in my blog would make an excellent alibi because, you know, why would I do something that would make me such an obvious suspect? Hehe
Then, we saw Drew’s cardiologist, Dr. F. First, we had a heart ultrasound in which Drew cooperated fully the entire 20 minutes. To make it even more impressive, don’t forget that Hematology had already pissed him off. Albeit, Drew did need some reassuring when we walked in the room as he thought there was more bloodbath to come. Then, Drew had an EKG. Drew wasn’t quite as enthused with this even though it was much quicker than the ultrasound. So quick, I didn’t have time to snap a picture. I wish I did because seeing him with all of those leads coming from his chest reminded me of Neo on The Matrix.
Dr. F. did indicate that the leakage in his valve seemed to be slightly worse than it was in January and felt that upping Drew’s dose of his heart medication was warranted and, to my dismay, said we’d probably have to make decisions about additional open heart surgery in the next 1-3 years. But, for now, he’s OK and no need to panic and we don’t need to restrict his activity. But, Dr. F. does want weekly blood pressure checks since Drew’s blood pressure was high “for a boy like him” even with his, as Dr. F had put it, “pretty good dose” of medication. So, I’ll need to recalculate my road trip counter to account for weekly trips to Henderson for the next month. Yeah, yeah…I know…it’s only Henderson, but until gas is below $3.00 I’m going to fuss about driving 25 miles.
Here some other pictures from our trip:
drewunarmed 