...and again...and one more time!!!

Cali must really like the emergency room because she's been back, again!  This time for bleeding issues.  She has had this trouble on and off throughout her long hospital stay and started bleeding again the day after getting home from the hospital with the blood clot.  The next day she started passing clots, some as big as my thumb.  By the next day the clots were so big you could hear them splash in the toilet (sorry for the graphic details, but they were huge!!)  so off to the ER again she went.  They found a hole / tear in her vaginal wall that at first they talked about cauterizing closed, but then after getting some more opinions they decided to let it heal itself.  So 6 hours later she was home. 

It's a good thing, too because the 4th of July is my kids' favorite holiday!  Yeah... even before Christmas.  We do the same thing year after year, and if I try to change it up I get an earful.  We relax throughout the day, then have a BBQ for dinner and I'm expected to make a potato salad.  Then off to JHS to watch the city's fireworks where we meet up with the neighbors and more extended family.  Then we come back home, do our own fireworks in the street while eating homemade ice cream.  That's it.  But the relaxing day, the family, the fun and tradition have made this day special for all of my kids. 

But not before we had to get Cali to Instacare!  She woke up with a really bad lower back pain.  Sure enough, she has a urinary tract infection!  Pop her some pills, give her a heating pad and prop her up in the jeep to watch the fireworks and she was good to go.  It made her really tired but since then she's doing a bit better everyday!!

When Cali went to the ER for bleeding, the gentleman that came in to start an IV looked her up and down and said, "You look like you've been in a battle!"  It took 4 pokes before he finally was able to get a line in.  He left, but came back in a minute later.  "I know who you are!  You're Jo Nolast!  I sat with you during your CT scan the first time you came in.  Do you mind if we talk about it?"  He then told her how he had been eating lunch on that Sunday when the charge nurse came in telling everyone they had a trauma coming.  He said he really gets excited for traumas because it gets his adrenaline going and helps the time fly.  The charge nurse knows this and said, "Don't get excited this time.  This is a 24 year old pregnant woman that is 20 weeks pregnant and isn't going to make it."  "And now here I am sitting here talking to you!!!"  She truly has baffled the medical world, and we are so grateful.

We had all our kids with us, a few extra dogs, good food and our 4th of July was awesome!

Opps! She did it again!!

Cali ended up in the hospital again!!  Thank goodness it was only for 24 hours, but it was still very scary!  She may be smiling in this picture, but she was hurting and VERY scared!

Cali was pulling her hair up to go to get her INR levels tested (how thick or thin her blood is) and came in to me and asked, "Is it weird that when I move my arm or breathe in real deep it hurst right here?"  She was rubbing the left side of her neck and when she moved her hand I noticed the swelling.  So, back to the ER!  The cool / interesting / funny thing about this trip was she ended up in the same trauma room with the same ER staff from her first time when she was life flighted.  None of the staff realized it at first, since they were just making sure she was stable and safe, and she looked completely different from the first time.  Once the commotion settled down, someone put 2 and 2 together and then all of a sudden Cali was famous!  They all came in to touch her, talk to her, cry with her, tell her how much they worried about her.  Some just stood at the end of her bed and shook their heads in disbelief that she had survived.  I guess in the ER the staff has to sign a paper saying they won't seek out any of the patients once they leave the ER so the staff had assumed that with as bad as Cali was when she left them, that she had passed away since they couldn't check to find out.  They were all very much in awe to see her not only alive, but looking so good.  One of the docs that worked with Cali in one of the ICU's was in the ER and her nurse asked her if she remembered Cali.  I happened to walk by just then, and when the doc said, "That name sounds familiar...?" I touched her shoulder and said, "Jo Nolast."  She got all excited, so glad she would get to see her again!

I took these pictures when Cali was getting a CT scan. As you can see there are a lot of machines and equipment and from what they tell us they used every bit of it with a whole bunch of people trying to figure out what was wrong with Cali. (We got a little taste of it; while we were there another trauma came in and we were only separated by a curtain.  It obviously wasn't as severe as Cali's was but it was still pretty organized chaos.)

Cali ended up having a few blood clots, the biggest one being behind her collarbone.  Again she was the talk of the ER because she was stumping the doctors.  Two days before this her INR levels were perfect (2.5) and this day they were 1.3; very thick so she was clotting even when they put the IV in her arm.  And her platelets were at 1100 - a far cry from the 400 when she left the hospital a week ago.  Not sure why her levels changed so drastically so quickly, but they are running tests for some different autoimmune diseases to see if she has any of them.  The doctors who didn't know what Cali had been through recently were all ready to send her home because the clot is in a safe place (for a clot) and they knew they could manage it with meds at home.  But the trauma docs once again went up to bat for us and insisted that if they didn't admit her, they would just put her in an ER observation room overnight so all of us - including them - would feel better about things.  So Cali and I spent the night up on the 4th floor.  She was released this afternoon - after a 24 hour stint in the hospital and is very grateful to be home... again!!