Shots, shot and more shots

Hi Y'all. ;P

On Monday (October 26th) I went in to get my blood cell counts checked. I took Little Boy and Little Girl in with me after the two Big Kids got off to school. I kept them entertained by looking for pictures of kittens and babies and such in the magazines from the waiting room. In a "Readers Digest" we found a cartoon of a lady stuck in a clamp next to an article about stress. Little Boy kept going back to look at the picture and asking why she was getting squished. I told him someone just drew the picture that way. A few minutes later, he said he would GET the man who was squishing that lady. He's a cutie. Little Girl wanted to see the baby and animal pictures. She likes to coo and pet the pictures. They kept me and the other patients who were waiting quite entertained.

Anyways, simple finger prick to get a little blood that the Nurse (Jennifer) collects in a little tube then holds it up to a metal tube that comes down out of a big machine on the counter, which sucks it up. It whirrs and then prints out a paper with my blood counts on them. The White Blood cell count was a little low, so she went to show the Doctor. When she came back she said the doctor wanted me to have an immune boosting shot that day and Tuesday, and then would check my levels again on Wednesday morning. The shot just goes in my upper arm. It stings a little, but not for long, like a tetanus shot would. Shoot, when was the last time I got one of those? Oh, well… no more immunizations for me for a while…

The shot stimulates my bone marrow to produce more white blood cells. The main side effect is that it makes my bones ache. The first night it wasn’t so bad, but Tuesday I had a hard time falling asleep. And sometimes in the morning, or when I got up from laying down, my lower back would kind of give me a quick jolt of pain, but just a quick thing, and then it would calm down.

When I went back in on Wednesday, my white blood cell count was up, but where I have kids with runny noses already, they wanted to continue the shots through Thursday, and then check again on Friday.

The nurse was always way nice with the kids, the first day when we had to wait longer, she gave them each a package of fruit snacks. The other days they could get a sucker out of the basket they kept by the door. On Friday we had a longer wait in the waiting area, and the desk next door had a basket of candy out for Halloween. So they each got one of those, and our front desk ladies had a coloring book and crayons they could use. Little boy can really get into coloring, and loves it when I will sit and color with him (which I did). Little Girl would color, or wander or try and get in his way. She is a sister, after all. ;) When Nurse Jennifer called me back to check my count, Little Girl saw a couple of little Halloween bag on the counter. Nurse Jennifer had put together a goodie bag for each of them! The kids were so excited. And was excited because the doctors said my white blood cell count was high enough I didn’t have to get another shot! Whew!