Blood Infusion & Neulasta Blast

So last Thursday night Case started to get really grumpy. He woke up every two hours and continued his grumpiness into Friday morning. The doctors and nurses are always drilling into us to call if anything is amiss, so I called and we went in. His red blood cells were low, so they decided to give him a blood infusion.

The doctors also think that he had a reaction to a shot he gets after chemo, Neulasta. This shot is given 24 hours after chemo, and it helps the bone marrow and blood recover more quickly after treatments since they get attacked by the chemo. It has a delayed effect of one week. Since Case's bone marrow was squeaky clean and healthy already, the Neulasta kind of made it go crazy and over-produced white blood cells (he went from 1,000 WBC on Thursday to 38,800 WBC on Friday twenty-four hours later!) This can make people's bones ache. So that's why he was up all night and grumpy...his bones hurt all over! How sad! It makes my heart hurt for him, especially since he can't tell me anything!

Once we got to the clinic and then on to the hospital he really perked up! It must have been the crowds of smiling faces surrounding him!


So we got to do a 4-hour preview of the hospital in the Plano location. The nurses were in love with Case, and who wouldn't be? He was all smiles and proved to be quite a flirt! Every ten minutes another nurse would pop in, "I heard we just got a cute baby in!"

While I loved the Dallas location, I know we'll love the Plano location too. It's newer, and has huge floor to ceiling, wall to wall windows overlooking pastures with horses. And it's so nice being a 15-minute drive from home. So Case went home stuffed with red blood cells, pinker lips, and a preview into our future stays. We go in a week from today for round two of chemo.

My sister in law, Kendra, made his adorable custom hospital shirt! She took a onesie and cut the bottom off, made it open in the front with snaps, and added a pocket for his port. It worked beautifully! Thank you Kendra! The gowns at the hospital were way too big.