A night at the hospital / Nadia picks up leaves

We had a bit of a scare Thursday evening. Just before bed time Nadia dashed into the other room and we heard a big bang. The only witness was Einstein and he’s not talking. I was there within 5 s and picked Nadia up. She rubbed her head, teared up a bit, and then snuggled in. The bruise was already forming, but this is usual in our platelet-compromised little girl. After a short, nice snuggle I took her upstairs to put on her pajamas. She now had a full-blown goose egg growing on her forehead, and another bruise on the other side of her head.

So we started thinking. Oh Dear. What happened? Is this type type of trauma we need to worry about? With Nadia’s platelets so low, she is at risk of a brain bleed from much less trauma than you or I. Having bruises on both sides of her head meant she spun around some how and had two impacts. The worst possible case could have been that she ran off the top 4th stair, jumped, hit the buffet with her head, and then the tile floor with the other side of her head. She might have tumbled down the stairs. We have no idea so had to err on the side of caution. We phoned pediatrics on call at KGH and they told us to come in.

So we did. They took blood, did examinations, and with the advice of the blood doctor on call at BC Children’s (who just happened to be our blood doc we will be meeting with on Tuesday), they recommended a CT scan and to keep Nadia overnight for observation.

I work with radiation safety do semi-annual testing of the CT scanners in our health region. I am quite familiar with this CT, but have never been in the room with it operating and scattering radiation at me. But when children are being scanned it is common protocol to give a parent a lead apron to wear (for protection from the scattered x-rays) in order to help restrain their child in order to keep them as still as possible during the scan. So being inside the scan room during operation was an interesting experience for me both personally and professionally. Even with my best efforts, Nadia struggled and moved during the scan. Fortunately, the image quality was good enough to rule out a major brain bleed, but they could not rule out a minor one.

So we spent the night at the hospital. Nadia does not like having her vitals checked. If anyone walks in the room with a stethoscope around their neck, Nadia freaks out. And the blood pressure test always measures high, if at all, because Nadia screams the whole time. But, we figured out a system back in August when we spent a week at Children’s. Once Nadia falls asleep – she sleeps through all the vital checks!

BUT – this time they were worried about a potential brain injury. So they needed to check her eyes during the vital checks. Talk about crazy-making. Every 2 hours they had to wake Nadia up in a dark room and shine a flashlight in her eyes! It was tricky, but fortunately Nadia would fall back asleep immediately after. In the end Nadia only got about 1/2 the sleep she usually does. She woke up at about the same time she usually does. They left the blood pressure band on her arm that had a connection dangling from it. This way they would not have to put it on and take it off all night. So I awoke to Nadia taking the metal connection and sliding it against he metal crib bars, much like a convict sliding their metal cup along their cell bars. Above is a picture from that morning. Nadia the convict, looking as tired as she was. 😉

This is kind of a taste of things to come. Post transplant, and even for the most successful transplants, it is expected that after being discharged patients will need to return to the hospital a few times as their weakened/developing immune system struggles to cope with the real world.

Today has been a nice day in Kelowna. Nadia and I spent part of the afternoon picking up some leaves. She is a big help!

We are off to Vancouver again soon. We will be meeting with the blood doctors and will likely get an update on the plans for Nadia’s bone marrow transplant. We will also be visiting pediatric respirology,  dentist, and optometry for baseline measurements to be used for long-term monitoring of Nadia’s disease.

Hoping for good weather up on the mountain passes!

http://youtu.be/09xyqhYoqRo