Another trip to ABQ

Several weeks ago, David got his first blood transfusion in many years, as part of our efforts to get him cured of whatever disease he has.  The idea with the blood transfusion is to give his body something good to work with so we can see some growth and physical development.  He's very, very small for a 10 yr old- less than 3rd percentile, actually.  

When we first started with this program his hemoglobin was around 4.0 gm/dl.  Normal is around 11-13.  So, he's basically running with 1/3 the oxygen in his blood that he should have.  A week after his first transfusion, he was 8.5 gm/dl.   A week later, he was 6.6 gm/dl.  Since his bone marrow is producing blood, the destruction of this good blood may be occurring in the spleen, but the doctors need to rule out several other factors before we go removing his spleen.

Anyway, in order to keep his blood up, it was time for another transfusion and so, it was off to Albuquerque again.

Mom never misses a schooling opportunity!

It's a pretty easy drive of about 3.5 hrs to my mother's house in Santa Fe and we typically do that in the evening and spend the night there before going to ABQ in the morning.  David was actually looking forward to the transfusion because he gets to play video games.

The Wii one with IV in, waiting on blood.

This was his first time playing with a Wii and it took a bit to get the hang of it.  Before long, he was back to the slightly more familiar Xbox 360 and "Lego Star Wars".

The Video Zombie

There's a reason we don't have one of these devices and that is because they suck a person's brain out and replace it with a vacuum.  It takes 5 hrs for the transfusion and David can sit there with this vacuous expression on his face for the entire time!   Nevertheless, he got transfused and we headed home.

Sandyman, looking for another victim

 I did get to work with my new horse a little bit this week, for the first time since getting bucked off several weeks ago.  All I'm doing is saddling him and making sure he's used to the saddle.  I learned a few things about saddling and have been applying them. 

Short blog this week.  I'm just keeping everyone up to speed on stuff.