Let me start by saying a huge THANK YOU to all of you who
have prayed diligently for Ella’s iron levels.
It has been a long and stressful road.
Let me start with the end of February. That’s when we started going to the local
Children’s blood clinic to get Ella iron infusions. On our first visit her hemoglobin level was
6.1. Just for comparison sake, the “normal”
level for a 5 year old child is around 11, so Ella was almost half what she
should have been.
We started with iron infusions every other week and were
seeing little, if any, improvement. We then
tried doing them every week to 10 days, and still weren’t seeing the kind of
improvement we had hoped. In fact, it
wasn’t unusual for us to go in a week after an iron infusion and for reasons no
one could explain, her iron would be LOWER than it was before the iron
infusion. It was frustrating to say the
least.
Finally, when Ella went in for her g-tube surgery we talked
to the doctors and decided that it was time for a blood transfusion. This was not a decision we made lightly. It was made because what we were doing wasn’t
working, so we had to take things up to the next level. The blood transfusion bumped her hemoglobin
up significantly, but she still wasn’t within the “normal” range. On June 8th, one week after her second blood
transfusion, Ella’s hemoglobin was up to 10.9 which was the highest it had been
since she was a baby! Unfortunately just
a couple of weeks after that she dropped back down to around 9. Not nearly as bad as it had been, but still
not ideal.
On August 20th, after returning from Wyoming, we went to get
Ella’s blood checked. The nurses could
not get an IV started. Ella’s veins were
shot. After about 5 tries they finally
decided just to see if we could get a small blood draw and just check to see if
her hemoglobin was at least at a level where we could wait another week to do
something. Since it had been over a
month since her last blood work, we all were under the assumption that she was
going to be low. After they got the
little blood draw, I went into the exam room and started praying for a
miracle. That was the only thing that
was going to help at this point…a miracle that her hemoglobin would somehow be
at a decent level. A few minutes later
the nurse came in and showed me the results of Ella’s blood work…10.7!!! God had answered our prayer! I did what any mother would do in that
situation…I burst into tears. The doctor
came in and I got a great lesson on high altitude and its effect on red blood
cells and hemoglobin levels. I now
understand what they mean in the Olympics when they talk about “blood doping.” When Joe came home from work that night he
immediately started looking for the highest altitude in Virginia. In case you were wondering it’s a little town
called Monterey, VA, population around 200.
Today we went back to the doctor again to see how things
looked. We didn’t even try for an IV
this time, and just decided to check her blood and see where things were. I prayed all morning for a 10…just a 10 was
all we needed to avoid getting an IV.
Ella’s veins need a break, and as selfish as it is, I didn’t want to
spend my day sitting in a blood clinic all day (and when I say all day, I mean
ALL DAY…we got there at 8:45 am and in the past when she’s had a blood
transfusion we’ve left around 4pm).
After the labs were drawn we went into the exam room and I just prayed
and prayed. A few minutes later the
nurse came in with a smile on her face…this was a good sign. 10.6!
Amazing! Ella and I were so
excited that we both stood up and did a happy dance! And we happy danced our way right out of the
office.
We are, by no means, out of the woods. Ella is constantly losing iron through her
wounds, so we have to go back in a few weeks to get things checked again, but I
have to say that for today I am rejoicing!
Ella’s little body has to endure so much, and sometimes I just feel like
the kid doesn’t get a break. Well, today
she finally got a little break. We went
to Target to celebrate and I told Ella she could pick out any prize she
wanted. She chose a pack of Kleenex with jack-o-lanterns on it from the $1 section.
I love this kid!
3 comments:
Praise God for big and little things!
Still praying for a good start next week. I love your blogs and look forward to hearing all about Ella's progress.
Love the pictures of her ballet lessons. She is adorable.
She is lucky to have you as her Mom.
Thank you for the fantastic article. The place else
could anyone get that kind of info in such a perfect means
of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I am at
the search for such information.
organic-food
Hi – It’s good to read such interesting stuff on the Internet as I have been able to discover here. I agree with much of what is written here and I’ll be coming back to this website again. Thanks again for posting such great reading material!!
Post a Comment