Sunday

On Sunday Laurel was with mom all morning. Her counts were down and we were especially concerned about how fast her blood platelets had been falling each day. The counts from the blood taken at 4:00 a.m. were low enough to need some more platelets. Laurel left to attend church at 1:00 and the doctor still hadn't stopped in yet. The doctor finally came around 2:00 and ordered platelets and a blood transfusion for mom and wrote orders that if the counts came in that low again they should just go ahead and order what was necessary. Mom's temperature went up in the afternoon and she received some tylenol. Her platelets were finally started about 7:00. After that she was given a transfusion. Shortly into that transfusion her temperature spiked to 103+ and mom started to shake uncontrollably, she also remembers feeling disoriented. The transfusion was stopped and a sample of mom's blood was sent to the lab to determine if she was having a reaction to the new blood. Kevin called Grandma Blackham sometime around this event and could tell that she didn't sound like herself. He called Merlin and Pat. We all happened to be at Pat's house so we had Nurse Laurel call and see what was happening at the hospital. The nurse told Laurel what had been happening and also stated that mom was doing okay then and didn't seem to be confused to her. We decided that Laurel would go down to the hospital and make sure everything was okay and would probably spend the night with mom, which she did.


(Note from Valerie)