Yesterday morning's post was based on information from the infectious disease doctor, who came into Nic's room, told me his blood looked much improved, that he wasn't neutropenic anymore and that he was therefore taking Nic off antibiotics and clearing us to go home. About four hours later our hematologist came in, told us Nic's blood looked much worse, and we needed to talk transfusion, and then we could go home because there wasn't anything more they could do at the hospital and given the number of kids with nasty illnesses roaming the halls it would be safest to get Nic home.
I was confused, to say the least.
Apparently, it is all about perspective. Nic's white counts and absolute neutrophil count were up, and while his hemoglobin was down to 7.5 (the lowest it has ever been), to a doctor unfamiliar with Nic's usual numbers his blood probably did look pretty good. After all, many people with sickle cell have a baseline/normal hemoglobin of 7.5. To our hemqtologist, the numbers looked poor, especially because his retic was zero, which means his marrow is not producing any new blood cells now because it has been shut down by parvovirus.
Without getting into the entire long debate, we were able to leave, but he has to go back as an outpatient on Monday, and he is scheduled for a transfusion. If his hemoglobin and retic have miraculously improved by Monday than he avoids the transfusion. If not, well they have a bag of true universal donor blood (negative for any antibodies, even the ones you don't usually hear about) that literally has his name on it.
We are so happy to be home and have our family together, and our furnace has been fixed so we are toasty warm.
Please continue to pray for Nic's blood to improve, for his heart (as it is getting quite a workout due to his anemia and has a very loud murmur), that he would avoid a secondary infection since his immune system is still not great, and that he would recover mentally/emotionally from his stay. He was a bit of a grump yesterday afternoon.
Thank you all for your support through this! It has been quite a wild week, and we are glad we didn't have to shoulder the weight of this alone.
I was confused, to say the least.
Apparently, it is all about perspective. Nic's white counts and absolute neutrophil count were up, and while his hemoglobin was down to 7.5 (the lowest it has ever been), to a doctor unfamiliar with Nic's usual numbers his blood probably did look pretty good. After all, many people with sickle cell have a baseline/normal hemoglobin of 7.5. To our hemqtologist, the numbers looked poor, especially because his retic was zero, which means his marrow is not producing any new blood cells now because it has been shut down by parvovirus.
Without getting into the entire long debate, we were able to leave, but he has to go back as an outpatient on Monday, and he is scheduled for a transfusion. If his hemoglobin and retic have miraculously improved by Monday than he avoids the transfusion. If not, well they have a bag of true universal donor blood (negative for any antibodies, even the ones you don't usually hear about) that literally has his name on it.
We are so happy to be home and have our family together, and our furnace has been fixed so we are toasty warm.
Please continue to pray for Nic's blood to improve, for his heart (as it is getting quite a workout due to his anemia and has a very loud murmur), that he would avoid a secondary infection since his immune system is still not great, and that he would recover mentally/emotionally from his stay. He was a bit of a grump yesterday afternoon.
Thank you all for your support through this! It has been quite a wild week, and we are glad we didn't have to shoulder the weight of this alone.
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