Posts Tagged ‘platelets’

Two Quarts Low

Saturday, February 18th, 2012

Jake SoliderIt’s all about the blood…

In Leviticus 17:14 it says, “The life of every creature is in its blood.”  If your blood-numbers are out of whack, chemo can’t happen.  My white was so low I had to give myself shots.  My red was so low I was advised to see rare beef and dark green leafy vegetables. Then my platelets were so low we had to resort to a transfusion to try to help all of the above.

Because I am being treated at Balboa Naval Hospital, their blood bank is “in-house” (not mingled with the greater San Diego populace). I was prescribed two units which were cross-matched which means they stir a bit of mine with a bit of the other and see if it curdles.  What I find humbling is that it was most assuredly from a young soldier, two of them, actually.  There is the blood of young men coursing through my veins! It takes 2+ hours to put it in me with blood pressure and temperature every 15 minutes to monitor allergic reactions.

It helped, but still not enough and I had only the weekend to get my blood nubmers up, or postpone the next dose of kick-a-poo joy-juice. Soooo, I let by Bible Study and my bookclub know that I needed their prayers for my numbers! YES, I was retested after the weekend and my plateletes had gone up 50 points!  Since they were headed in the right direction, they let me have the chemo. Oh Praise God that I could stay on schedule with only one more after this.

Now I can be miserable for three weeks and then do this blood numbers-thing again 🙂