Home Til Next Tuesday
I’m okay to stay home for the next week.
We went into the day ward this morning for bone marrow samples (both the aspirate/liquid and the biopsy/solid ones). Also got my central line dressing redone and had blood samples taken. They said we were all done! I waited inside the entryway downstairs while Elana went to get the car.
But then she came walking back from the parking garage. The liaison nurse had called her, saying they already got my results and if we’re still there, they want to look at giving me some blood transfusions My red cell count (hemoglobin) was around 8.3 or 8.4, just under the 9.0 they prefer.
So a nurse took the initial blood sample, and said she’d come to the waiting room and let us know how long it’d take for the blood bank to get the blood together for me. It was already past noon, and it takes some time for them to get the blood bags together. It usually takes just over 3 hours for each one to drip its way into me, so it’ll be about six hours of sitting, once they got them to us.
Coincidentally, I have to return tomorrow morning for a CT scan to check that the infection in my lungs, from the pneumonia I had in March, is now long gone.
The haematology doctor came to let us know it was going to take a while to get the blood bags from the blood bank, and since I’ve got the CT the next day anyway, we can just go home and do it tomorrow. So I’ll be spending most of the day there.
Related to the bone marrow samples, we’re meeting with the doctors on Tuesday next week to talk about what happens next since it can take some time for the samples to get processed. This gives the doctors the details they need to determine when I’ll be getting my next chemo treatment, and which one they should use.
Knit Lots, Knit Often
One way I’ll be making the time go by tomorrow is by working on my new knitting project—since the scarf is finished!
The next project is a hat using a pattern called Turn A Square. The scarf had 20 stitches for each row; the hat is knit in the round, starting off with 96 stitches. Yowza. More learning. 🙂
