September 1 - Blood Work

September 1 - Blood Work

I knew better then to say it was a "P day" today and instead told Levi we needed to go to the hospital to get our blood work done. He however looked at me with this look of "umm duh mom" and said "Yay it's a P day!". Hopefully she will be there today.

We got to the hospital and were walking in through the garage tunnel and I asked Levi who he thought would be the lab tech today. He told me "P mommy" I said "really?!" he said "yup P. maybe Pa. Nope a New P!" for the rest of the walk in he kept telling me "Not P, new P!" It was cute, but I wasn't quite sure what he meant. We got to the lab, and neither P or New P were there. Today it was Nurse Pa. We got to the desk and he saw who it was, and he looked at me and said "Wheres P?!" I think Nurse Pa was a little taken back but she smiled.

Being silly while we waited.

Caught a little smile!

We didn't have to wait long before it was our turn. We went out back and Levi picked out a band-aid from the cupboard. He picked Candy but was upset that there were no fish on the band-aid. Nurse Pa came over and attempted the lab draw. For the most part it went ok. She put the needle in the opposite way in his arm from normal, therefore hitting a different vein. She missed the vein at first but after a few wiggles she got it in the vein. The filling of the green tube went fine. She started to fill the purple tube. Levi was very very squirmy and she wasn't paying the most attention to him, and suddenly the needle was like lifting up in his arm, it looked AWFUL. I have never seen something look like that under someones skin. A second later the needle popped out! UGH. The purple tube wasn't full yet. And that is the important tube. Nurse Pa put the band-aid on and was trying to get the tube to settle down so she could see exactly how much was in it. She asked if we had a few minutes and I said "of course" and she sent the tube down to the lab, to see if the tech was happy with how much was in the tube to do the CBC with. Levi happily played on the floor with the surf board and skateboard that he had picked from the treasure box.

She sent the tube down and then called down to the lab. Of course I could only hear one side of the conversation, but from what I could hear I am pretty darn sure even the people downstairs know who Levi is. She said "I just sent you a sample for a stat CBC and was wondering if you could verify if it was enough, it's a pedi" a few seconds later "Yes it's Levi, he's still here!" It was really cute. After about 5 minutes they called back and said that it was enough and I was very thankful because I didn't want to have to stick him again. Levi and I were out the door and on our way to Nursery School.

During this visit we had asked about adding our fax number to the lab slip as our Dr. V had instructed us to. The number was added. YAY!

It wasn't long before Jay received a fax at work. AWESOME. Oh wait, maybe not. The fax was asking for a fax to be returned with a signature and other information. Ok, understandable. Jay filled out the necessary paperwork and then faxed it back to them. A little while later they called and said, "we are unable to fax you the lab results, it must go through a doctor, however if you want to come down to the records department and show an ID we can give you the results." Umm... what?!?! that's crazy! Our doctor has authorized for us to receive the results directly. This is very frustrating. I need these numbers! Jay asked for the number of a higher up and we received the number for the safety VP or something like that. Jay called and left her a message.

The reason we really want to get these results faxed to us, became even more apparent when Levi's results didn't come in from K until after 4:30 for a stat lab that gets done at 8:15 in the morning. UGH! His counts were 171. Not a great number. Definitely not what I expect to see just a few days after an infusion. Now we start our constant look to see how he is doing. And wondering if we should take him again for labs on Friday or not. :( Not what I wanted going in to a holiday weekend.

Friday Update: Jay got to work in the morning and the lab results had been faxed and were sitting on his desk. Umm... WHAT?!?! they said that they couldn't send them, but then they did without the VP returning our call.

Tuesday Update: The VP called Jay back and they had a nice conversation. She apologized for not returning our call earlier, said she had been on vacation. She said that with our circumstances it would be perfectly fine for us to have the labs faxed and to let her know if we don't receive them the next time. Seems like a perfect example of right hand meet left hand. Now lets hope the labs get faxed on Thursday!