Overnight Adventure
Subtitle: What a Stupid Thing To Do
While chopping tomatoes for our daily capelinni Jim managed to drop the chef's knife on the floor. Don't ask me how that happened! It then bounced and whacked him in the shin resulting in a cut on his leg about 1-2 inches long and not too deep...maybe 1/8". Generally that would not be a problem
But, being in the middle of chemo, his blood platelet count is low. What do platelets do? Help the blood coagulate. So the cut continued to ooze blood even after pressure was applied, leg was elevated and ice bags laid on. Finally, about 11 Jim decided this might not be a good thing and called his oncologist. "Go to the emergency room and then have them call me," was the advice.
We've not done the emergency room thing very often so we were not prepared for the long hours of waiting. After the initial triage by a nurse which only took a 30 minute wait, we must have been put at the end of the line. We waited from midnight to 3 AM to get admitted to the actual treatment area. Once there we quickly were seen by the doctor and nurse. They called Jim's oncologist who said that based on the platelet count Jim should either get a platelet transfusion immediately OR go into the Cancer Center this morning at 8 AM to get it. That's a no brainer...don't want to make that 90 mile drive with no sleep :)
Then came the wait for cross matching blood, thawing platelets, and then the IV routine. All this took another 3 hours, including a 30 minute wait just to get the release papers printed !!! Yikes!
Finally, at 6:30 AM we were good to go. Through all this I was cold (nurse finally got me a blanket to wrap in) and we had no reading material. So our only entertainment was watching the comings and goings of the other patients and the continual flow of paramedics bringing in accident victims and geezers. Lots of sad stories there and a pretty depressing scene. Certainly there were many people who were more of an emergency that Jim was. But oh the waiting was painful.
On the way home we stopped to pick up a coffee cake for an easy breakfast...unhealthy but comforting. As we sipped coffee at about 7:30 we agreed that going to bed sounded mighty good. And it never felt more wonderful. I was exhausted. We slept untill about 11...not a full nights sleep for sure, but enough to get us through the day and into a normal night. Thus concludes the adventure of the whacky knife :)