1 a.m.
Karen
It wa. Mon. Yesterday - Sunday - when jesse and id come home alexa had rushed to meet us. She informed us that anna was sick and had been for the past few hours. We'd arrived home at 11 p.m. we all drove to the hospital anna bleeding on my lap the way there. When we got to the hospital it was near midnight and they informed us that anna needed more platelets and bone marrow from kate. At the hospital they drew blood from kate put it in a bag and inserted it into anna arm. They had to do this before the bone marrow operation in case anna lost blood during that. This took 30 minutes. Because anna had lost blood and her body was still getting used to the transfusion she was shivering. The nurse we knew alice kept giving anna blankets. Theyd put both kate and anna under in order to perform the operation. Then theyd taken bone marrow from kates pelvis and inserted them into annas arm. The transplant took 6 hrs.
Jesse, Pam and I were waiting in the room, waiting to hear the results from Kate's bone marrow operation. We'd been at the hospital overnight. I was very tired. Before the doctors did the surgery they had anestesthized both Anna and Kate.
Alice came out into the waiting room.
"You can come in," she told us.
We followed her down the long narrow thin white hall and into the room. Our daughters were lying motionless, one on each bed.
"They're still asleep as you can tell. Sit down," Alice told us, pulling over 2 uncomfortable dark blue plastic chairs.
She sat in one and Pam placed herself in the other. Jesse brought over 2 chairs, one for himself and the other for me. We sat down.
Alice placed the charts on her lap.
"Your daughter's," she began, "lost a significant amount of weight."
"How much?" I asked.
"20 pounds."
"Wow."
anna, who had been her heaviest at 110, was now 90.
"Has she been sick lately?" Alice asked.
I looked to Jesse who was home more and would know such things.
"Yes. She's been bleeding a lot too," he answered.
"That's what landed her in here in the first place," Pam put in.
"That's what she told me. In a few days we'll need to give her a blood transfusion to balance her platelet levels. This might help with some of the bleeding."
"Will it stop it?" I asked.
Alice looked at me.
"It might," she answered.
She turned back to Jesse.
"will you remind me again of the family history of cancer?" Alice asked.
"My sister had it. AML."
"A rarity."
"Yes. She died from it, actually," Jesse continued.
"I'm very sorry Mr. Fitzgerald."
"Thank you."
"We're so afraid for anna, that she won't..." I said, my blue eyes wide.
Pam placed her hand over mine.