Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Quick Visit to the Hospital

It's been an interesting 48 hours.  I went in to the doctor on Monday morning for a mole removal, and ended up not leaving for 11 hours.  Oops...
The removal itself went really well, but when I tried to sit up, I got ridiculously light-headed and almost blacked out.  I didn't get better right away, and after the nurses took my blood for testing, discovered that my hemoglobin level was at 5.2- way below where it was supposed to be.  They sent me over to the hospital to get a blood transfer- 700 mL of blood, to be exact.  I was so wonky that I couldn't even walk over from Internal Medicine to the Outpatient are for the transfusion- they pushed me in a wheelchair.  It took awhile to get my blood type, get the IV in, and get going with the transfusion, and at least 6 hours to get all the blood into my system.

I attempted to stay cheerful throughout the whole process, but was pretty zonked by the time I finally got home.  The nurses told me that once my body accepted the blood, I would feel much better, but that could be anywhere from a few hours to a few days.  I'm finally feeling much better this morning, after slogging through teaching yesterday and being unable to concentrate much on anything requiring focus.
I did, however, attempt to knit...

but was pressing too hard on my needle, and broke it!  My poor little size 1 bamboo needles...
All in all, it's been a long and kind of weird couple of days.  I overall feel much better with the new blood, but my left arm is still sore from the IV and my right shoulder constantly hurts from my large mole removal and stitches.  I'm not allowed to climb until my stitches are out so I don't accidentally pull them out, so at least I'll have a little time to get grading done for the end of the semester.
I'll be extra happy when I finally get my diagnosis and get this entire mess sorted out.  Until then- new needles, and lots of grading! :)

1 comment:

Samantha said...

5.2??!! Isn't 14 considered low? Damn, girl. I'm glad you are doing better, though.