I'm not sure what I wrote last night on Lauren's blog. It was late, we're all tired and I was doing it on my iPhone (which is great for text, but nothing longer). When I left the hospital at around 10:30 pm, Lauren was finally settled in her bed. Ideally it would have been nice to have gotten her up to her room by 8 pm so that she would have been tucked in her bed at her normal bed time of 8:30 pm, but at 10 pm, when they finally had a bed for her, she was already asleep. They had to wake her for the move, which didn't make her happy. To top it off we had to stop and get her chest x-rayed on the way up. We knew they had a bed for her at 3 pm, but it took them a long time for someone to get in there and disinfect the room for her. Of course, I'm not complaining, I just said ideally.

While we don't like to be admitted in the hospital, but if we have to, we don't mind being on 4th floor west (solid tumors). Unfortunately, we've been there so much we've gotten to know a lot of the nurses there (but not as well as the nurses in the day hospital), and of course we've also gotten to know a lot of the nurses on the oncology floor at CHOC too. It helps Lauren feel special when she steps on the 4th floor last night and a lot of nurses yell "Lauren!!" and come over and give her (and us) hugs.

Here what is going on with Lauren:

They think she has some type of infection. Her body is producing antibodies to fight off the infection. In fighting off the infection, the antibodies are attacking her red blood cells which is making her anemic, which required her to get a blood transfusion. Is any of this true? I don't know. But that is what I heard when the doctor explained it too me. Even though we got to the ER at 8 pm, At 8 am, she still hadn't gotten any blood. I couldn't understand why since she is a pretty common blood type (A+). The doctor came in to explain what the problem was. Because of the antibodies in the blood they had to find blood that not only matched her blood type but with the same antibodies. If they didn't, the two bloods might clash and fight it out, which could be bad for Lauren's body. Another problem was that they didn't have any matching blood and would need to send out samples to local blood banks to see if they had any that matched, which required them to draw more blood samples, which was the last thing Lauren needed them to do. This whole process was really stressing me and Hilary out. What would happen if they couldn't find any? How soon did she need blood? What would to her if she didn't get any blood soon? What was chances of finding a blood type with matching antibodies? It turned out chances were good they'd find a match. In fact, the match was at CHLA all along. What a relief.

After the blood transfusion, Lauren had to pee. When she got up I noticed the toilet was filled with blood! Internally, I totally freaked out. Since we were in the ER still, the bathroom was down the hallway (not a our room). I wanted to show our nurse or doctor. But I didn't want to leave the bathroom in case someone else used it and flushed the toilet. Even though you're in the hospital it's not always easy to find a doctor or a nurse. I left Lauren in the bathroom while I ran down the hallway to find out nurse. When she saw it, she seemed a little unsure. She grabbed a flashlight and was looking hard into the toilet. She told the doc what happened and said she'll come by and explain everything. The doctor said that she thinks Lauren was just peeing dead red blood cells, which isn't bad and that we should have taken a sample. If it's live red blood cells then that could indicate a problem with her kidneys. She said I shouldn't be too concerned about it. I was thinking, easy for you to say.

Around 4 pm, Lauren's heart rate started spiking. Normal rate is 90 bpm, Lauren was at 175 bpm. Also, her blood pressure starting dropping. These are signs that Lauren is about to go septic (shock) which is not a good thing. Lauren went septic in Dec. '08 and it was touch and go for awhile. So we know how fast she can crash and how serious it be. To counter, the pumped her with fluids to increase her blood pressure. By 10 pm her heart rate was down to 149. 8 am this morning, it's now down to 120. What a relief.

Other stuff:

Around 10 pm last night, they had finally found a room for us on the oncology floor. On the way up they took an x-ray of her chest, because one of her lungs sounded wet. They wanted to make sure she didn't have an pneumonia.
They are going to give Lauren a steroid boost to help her fight the infection. Which me and Hil didn't want to hear, since it's taken us so long to get to the level of steroid she is currently on. I'd hate to take 10 steps back.
Platelet level is down. She needs platelets. Unfortunately CHLA doesn't have any platelets. They will be checking with Red Cross this morning.
Good news. Even though the urine sample we collected was red, there was no blood in it. Go figure.

Hemoglobin were at 11, normal levels. So preliminary results of her blood transfusion indicates the transfusion was accepted by her body. They'll recheck throughout the day.

I texted Nurse Tina around 11:30 last night, that I was at home and that I love her. Hil called me later in the night to ask why I hadn't text'd her to let her know I made it home safely. I said, oops. I think I told Nurse Tina I loved her.