Our Little Scare

With all that is happening with Kayla, we have been so lucky that nothing major has occurred.  She has held up so well with her weekly chemo treatments.

Well, this afternoon, Kayla got bonked in the nose somehow and came to me with a bloody nose.  Uh-oh.  All I could think about was how low her platelets were last week. Platelets help blood to clot, and with low platelets the blood doesn't clot as easily. Too much bleeding that won't stop, even from a bloody nose, can be pretty bad (a friend just told me two days ago that her daughter almost died from a bloody nose that wouldn't stop bleeding).  It was slow at first, and then the blood seemed to come faster.  Kayla kept getting upset and crying and I was trying to get her to calm down because I knew that crying would only make the blood come faster.  Our sack of dirty tissues was filling up fast.  I called the clinic and left a message for a nurse to call me back.  I wasn't sure if we were going to need to hop in the car and head to the hospital or what.

The nurse called back after just a few minutes and told me to pinch Kayla's nose.  Well, that kind of got her upset again and then I saw (sorry if this is gross) a big blood clot coming out of her nose.  I was still on the phone with the nurse at the time (for which I am glad) and she told me that the blood was trying to clot (which was good).  The nurse said that if we were to come in, they would just pinch her nose to try to get it to stop bleeding and if she needed it, do a platelet transfusion.  So, Kayla wouldn't let me pinch her nose, but she did it herself.  The nurse told me she'd call back and check on us in a few minutes.  After a little while longer (and another blood clot - ick) her nose seemed to be slowing down.  Phew!!!  By the time the nurse called back her nose had just barely stopped bleeding.  I was very relieved.

Kayla was actually pretty calm about the whole thing.  She did get upset a couple of times, but it wasn't about her bloody nose.  She did great pinching and switching out Kleenexes when she needed new ones.  While this was all going on, Benson decided that he didn't want to wear a diaper and I was trying to get him on the toilet, or get his diaper back on.  Luckily, the baby was sleeping. :)