How Many Facepalms Can One Hospital Earn?
I'm blogging live from the hospital today!
I promise I won't update this every 8 minutes and make my posts unreadable, but I have plenty of time on my hands. I'm in for blood transfusion number five. Hemoglobin fell down to around 8 this week, and I need all the help I can get to finish up these last few rounds of treatment.
Why the facepalms you ask? Well, we called to schedule the transfusion yesterday afternoon and had to hurry over before the phlebotomy team closed up shop to draw blood for them to type and screen so I get the right blood from the bank. Mom kindly made the call, and let them know I have a port, so they scheduled my transfusion with a nurse who knows how to use ports...but they apparently didn't think to do the same for the blood draw. It's been a couple weeks, so my vein worked okay. All was fine.
We got up bright and early to be here at 7:00 am for check in and the nurse asked where my red bracelet was. Now, I had asked last night if I needed that one, and was told I didn't. Last time I got it before I went home, but whatever. The red bracelet is coded to match me up with my blood. The nurse this morning asked where it was...only to find out they managed to not type and screen my blood from last night, so we had to redraw and do it all over. Cue the face palm.
My nurse today is awesome and gave us vouchers for breakfast, so I got a cheese Danish for my time, but seriously. What the hell did they do with my blood?
Mom and I are just hanging out in the recliners now, waiting to get this show on the road as soon as the blood gets figured out...In case you were wondering, this is the same hospital that held me hostage and told me I had a fibroid tumor, which was likely not cancerous. More facepalms.
In other news, I had my third internal radiation treatment yesterday. Things went well, overall. The entrance to my uterus has shrunk, so they had a little trouble getting the most painful of the metal rods in place. Thankfully I had Percocet and a high pain tolerance on my side. My radiation team seems amazed I joke around during treatment, which makes me wonder what other people do. Cry? Scream? I didn't ask, but I'm really curious now.
We're still fighting a couple stubborn spots with the tumor and the lymph node, and that's part of why I'm getting the transfusion today. More blood means more oxygen circulating, which helps the radiation to be effective.
My regular doctor is on vacation next week, and the doctor who will be performing my brachytherapy procedure will be the doctor who taught mine how to do the procedure, so I'm feeling pretty good about it.
Dr. C, if you're reading this, I'm getting my blood, now go have fun in Hawaii!
