Big Needles and Little Kids

We're back from another trip to Albuquerque.  Last week, David got a blood infusion to give him something to work with while we try to diagnose his problem.  The infusion was really helpful and he was more active with a better appetite than we've ever seen him.  This is only a temporary measure since the real goal is to get him making healthy blood on his own, but it was good to see what effect good blood would have on him.

This week we went in for a bone marrow biopsy.  The idea here is to find out whether or not his marrow is making good blood.  If it is, then it's probably his spleen that's the problem and a full or partial splenectomy might be the ticket there.  If the marrow is not making good blood, then we might be looking at a bone marrow transplant.  At this point, though we're just looking to see where the problem is. 

The patient with IV in place

Getting hooked up with monitors and all that

Post-Op Recovery

The biopsy involves sticking a pretty long ol' needle thru the upper butt into a hip bone.  Immediately post-Op, David was really hungry and demolished a granola bar, hot dog, and 2 Grandma's chocolate chip cookies.  That just held him until we left the hospital.  When then stopped at Cracker Barrel where he put down 1/2 of a chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes.  At our first stop, he ate a whole bag of M&M's and 1/2 can of green tea.  

He's pretty stiff and sore right now, but taking it like a trooper.  Oh, and pre-op, we did a CBC to see how he was doing with the infusion.  His hemoglobin was 8.0, up from 4.0 last week.  That's still 2/3 of what it should be, but definitely gives us an idea of how he might function with decent blood.  We'll do another CBC in a week to see how long the infusion "holds".  We'll also have results from the bone marrow biopsy in a few days. 

On the ranch, we had an interesting week.  We got 83 head of cattle in and B2 and I moved to pasture using our Grizzly 660 ATV's.  Grizzlys tend to overheat, esp when going slow and it wasn't a big surprise when B2's bike over-heated.   Her fan wasn't coming on and I figured it had gone bad.  But, driving down the road back to the house didn't cool the bike down.  The next day, I found the radiator empty and figured it boiled out.  I re-filled it and started the bike to let it heat up so I could watch the fan.  Immediately, coolant started coming out of an overflow tube which is designed to provide a drain in case of water pump failure.  If the coolant gets into the motor, it'll dilute the oil and cause catastrophic engine failure.  So, me and the boys tore the water pump apart- a dirty job which involves draining both coolant and water first.  Long story short, we found a cracked gasket.  This allowed coolant to seep past the seal and out the drain.  With all the coolant gone, the heat sensor in the radiator didn't turn out, thus the fan didn't come on.  This was a good lesson in troubleshooting as a small crack in a gasket at the bottom of the engine prevented the fan at the top of the radiator from coming on.  A lot of  people would've just replaced the fan.  I've got a brand-new pump coming, along with parts to rebuild the current one, which I'll stick on the shelf and use as a spare since we have 2 of these Grizzlies.