Friday, June 26, 2009

Blood Transfusion Day......

The alarm went off at 5:15 and I hit it twice. The plan was to go to bed early, which I did, as I turned the tv off around 11:30 pm and fell asleep shortly after. BUT THEN.....around 2:oo am I had to pee, so I woke up and made my way to the bathroom. When this normally happens (pee in the middle of the night), I get up in zombie mode, pee get back into bed and just roll back to sleep with no problem. I guess when I got up to go last night, a thought of having to get up in a few hours for the transfusion came into my brain and that, my friends kept me up until 3:30 am! After laying there awake for an hour I finally turned the tv on and watched some infomercials (LOL) and finally fell back to sleep around 3:30 and then the alarm went off at 5:15. UHGG. That's why it got slapped twice at 5:15 and then I finally decided to get up and start the day. As I've said before, it really does take me a while to physically move in the morning due to pain and stiffness issues, so by the time I got to the hospital for the transfusions it was 7:20. Oh well.....beat me with a stick. Turns out they really weren't ready for me anyway (they probably tell you to get there at least 15 min before they want you there anyway) as the needle entered my arm at exactly 7:40 am. The 2 bags of blood took 3 hours to infuse and then out the door I went. Now last time I had a transfusion, I experienced an increase in heart rate to where I thought I might be having a heart attack and my pulse ran around 130, which really got kinda scary. I also ran a small temp (around 100.2) I had left my post transfusion instructions there by accident last time, so didn't have a sheet to refer to so I didn't know if this was a reaction and normal or abnormal. I was really close to calling the ER that night but decided I would be ok if I could just go to sleep, and I did and was better and better but the heart rate and small fever did last 2 days. Well, today I read and kept the instructions on transfusion reactions and guess what #1 is? INCREASED heart rate, RAPID PULSE and HEART PALPITATIONS! So I guess I wasn't losing my mind last time. (good to know...good to know)`Just FYI the others on the list are: skin rash, fever/chills/flushing, headache, backache (now that one's gonna be hard to tell :), diarrhea (that one won't be hard to tell) and finally fatigue (laughable one for me, huh?) I remember last time too the symptoms came on later in the evening....around 8:00 pm or so and it's now 7:15 pm. I don't feel bad at all, so fingers crossed, I'll skip the ole symptoms this time, if that's ok. So all in all, it went well and I'm feeling OK.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hang in there..Thinking and Praying for you daily..Tam

Susan said...

sounds promising... :0)