Forget Fashion.....

Bernie has just come home from hospital after round four of chemo, and whilst he was in hospital for the week, Adelaide's weather turned from sunny to really quite cold. Bernie has never been one for pyjamas, but, since losing his hair and some weight, he is really cold at night now. So, I went off shopping for some "Grandpa" flannelette pyjamas for him. Now my husband goes to bed all rugged up with his strippy PJ's and a woollen beanie. He actually looks quite cute, but the main thing is he feels warm. This time before leaving hospital he had to have two blood transfusions as his blood counts were too low to recover on their own. When you are given blood after an accident, where you are losing blood, they can pump it in quite fast to replace the volumes lost. When you are having it as a way of boosting your blood count, it has to be done quite slowly, as your body already has all the blood it needs, and it needs to "make room" for this new, enriched supplement. So, it took 3 hours each time to infuse just 300 mls of blood. They can only take between 3 to 4 hours to infuse it as, after the four hour mark, the blood starts to clot in the bag and won't feed through. The blood transfusion seems to have really worked as he is a lot stronger this time than last time. Our biggest thanks to all you blood donors out there. It is a real gift.