New weekly routine

Since Gavins score is so high, his transplant team has decided to treat his fibrinogen levels now (remember the ER debacle after the "dry run"?!). Usually they would only treat it if he was showing other symptoms of bleeding, but since they think his transplant could be very close, they want to go ahead and keep his levels up. His nurse said "he's running on empty in a lot of areas."

So yesterday Gavin and I spent 6 hours at the hospital getting his blood transfusion (at least it wasn't 10 though...) :P We had to meet with the Hemotologist (blood doctor) first, then wait to get the paperwork transferred to the POTC (pediatric outpatient treatment center) and see if they could squeeze us in for the day. Thankfully they had room, so we went upstairs and waited around some more.

We LOVE the POTC!!! Thats where we used to go to get all of Gavin's blood draws back before he had his broviac. I wouldn't let anyone else near him with a needle!!! They are so great.

They set us up with a portable dvd player and 3 different Baby Einstein movies (Gavin was in heaven!) to pass the time while we waited for the blood to arrive from the blood bank. After a couple hours it finally came, and they started the transfusion which took about an hour. Somewhere in there we both fell asleep on the bed...we were exhausted!

Then we had to stick around so they could take his vitals and make sure he didn't have an allergic reaction. Something I didn't know was that the more you receive blood products, the more likely you are to have an allergic reaction to it! :O (one reason why they try to avoid giving blood if they can) So they watch him closely for that.

Finally we were free to go! Now I REALLY hope we get the call soon, because otherwise we're going to have to go through all that every week from now on! UGH. We're gonna need more Baby Einstein...