FHE Around the Jackson Home....Never a Dull Moment!

So, yeah....ummm.....hmmm....FHE. Imagine a bloody nose, a call to the on call doctor at MSTI, an unhappy Ian because I want to put a vice clamp(not really a clamp, just my fingers) on his nose (to help stop the bleeding of course), a concerned mom trying to track down her husband who had a mandatory commanders call at 8pm at night (his cell phone of course is turned off), a wild Bryce and a screaming baby. I guess that should do it. Just enough description to start us off. Forget about starting a normal FHE.
I've been prematurely celebrating how well Ian is doing this cycle of chemo. Of course, he HAS done very well. However, that didn't mean he wasn't going to need a transfusion, .....at 10pm .....in Boise (silly mommy, what were you thinking?). Well, I finally got a hold of Mike, one of his co-workers went and interrupted the mandatory pow wow and told him there was an emergency back at the ranch. I wonder how scared he was AND what must have crossed his mind as he contemplated the possibilities on his slow drive home. I say slow drive home because everything on base is agonizingly slow, when you need to get somewhere fast!
By the time Mike got home, I had already heard back from the on call doctor (Dr. Hansen, who by the way is LDS and was probably trying to enjoy FHE with his own family, when I had to interrupt), we needed to come to St Lukes in Boise to draw some labs on Ian and determine if he needed a platelet transfusion. Of course the base hospital is no help, apparently nobody knows how to deal with accessing a port at this time of night and they don't carry irradiated blood products. Okay.... so on a quick side note, who knew there was a choice between irradiated blood products and blood products that hadn't been through the irradiation process....??? So I'm thinking I want the most possibly clean product if given the choice thank you very much! On the other hand, am I going to be so picky if I am bleeding to death in an emergency room from a serious accident????? Tough call..... So I digress, back to the story of our evening.....
We arrive at the hospital a little after 9:30pm... as Ian and I get closer to the oncology annex, Ian starts becoming more and more agitated. I keep promising him that we aren't staying, we just need to get a little blood to see if he needs a transfusion. Of course my promises fall on deaf ears. Never try to reason with a two year old, you won't win. When we finally get to the room they want us in, I get Ian on the bed and the whole process gets started. The nurse and tech were nice and efficient. Ian's port was accessed without incident and Mike, Bryce and Spencer had made it to the room without issues after parking the family chariot.
We probably waited no more than 2o minutes for the lab results, yep, Ian's platelet levels were pretty LOW and there was a bonus, care to guess anyone??? His red blood cells were LOW too. Why does any of this matter you may ask? Well, it simply means that a quick, perhaps hour long transfusion of platelets, has now turned into an hour plus transfusion of platelets and an additional couple hours plus transfusion of red blood cells. At best we'll be there three hours and worse case scenario we'll be there for five hours plus. So you may be asking why this is a problem. Well, it's after 10:30pm by the time the first transfusion even starts and we have the entire Jackson 5 trying to settle comfortably into a room designed for a patient and perhaps one other small person.
If we hadn't all been so deliriously tired, it could have been very comical! Ian got the bed of course, and Mike and Bryce shared the VERY small bench seat bed. I wish I had taken my camera for a picture of that. Not only is the bed uncomfortable, it's also about 5 inches too short for Mike and woefully too narrow for two people to sleep on. By miracle, Bryce didn't fall of the edge. Spencer and I initially curled up in a ball at the foot of Ian's bed. Once I had fed Spencer into a drunken milk stuppor I put him into his very uncomfortable car seat to sleep and then I curled up next to Ian. Normally, I don't mind sleeping with my kids, however, I have noticed this phenomenon that occurs when either Mike or I sleep with them. It doesn't matter if we have them well over on there side of the bed, they are like heat seeking missiles, that will ultimately find us! I was dying of heat, and little Ian always has to have his hand down my shirt to hold onto my underclothes. This is of course,is the last vestiges of the days when I nursed him.
So now that I have gone into entirely too much detail, did I mention that the nurse had to be in the room for the first parts of the transfusions to make sure Ian didn't have any adverse reactions to the blood products. It's next to impossible to get a decent night sleep in the hospital.

Ian's platelet and red blood cell transfusion went off without a hitch and we got to leave the hospital at 3:30am. Of course we had to stop to get some gas before could start home. By the time we got on the highway, it was 4:00am. No problem, we would be home by 5:00am.... guess again, half way home we hit road construction that has I-84 shut down to one lane of traffic half way to Mt Home and speed down to 45 miles per hour. Yeah..... so we enjoyed a leisurely return home. Mike was not amused, I just laughed. We got home at about 5:30 am and the boys went to bed and Mike and I finally got to bed.
Once we hopefully catch up from the sleep deprivation, maybe we will enjoy a good laugh about the experience. Of course, Ian is worth any amount of sacrifice. It was neat to see him look and feel better after the transfusions. He is such a neat kid. Bryce and Spencer are champs, they are so flexible and just roll with the punches. We have such neat kids. I hope that we as a family can continue to make a great team and just strive to see the humor in silly situations like this.