They let us out Wednesday late afternoon - yay!! It was touch and go there for a bit. No additional cold symptoms or fever, but on Tuesday evening Eric had a bleeding nose. Only bleeding nose does not even come close to describing the situation.
It started bleeding about 2 hours after the platelet transfusion and I joked that his body forgot to tell his nose that he'd just got platelets, but the joking stopped there. It was bleeding a fair bit and not stopping after about 30 minutes so he was given an oral dose of Tranexamic Acid. It did stop after that, for about 30 minutes, but then it started again. The blood was just pouring out. We went through the entire box of nice kleenex that we brought with us and multiple boxes of the scratchy hospital kleenex. It was coming out his other nostril and going down his throat which made him gag and ultimately vomit a couple times. Eric was understandably pretty upset, mostly from frustration that it was so uncomfortable and wouldn't stop. The Fellow ordered another unit of platelets and intranasal tranexamic acid, which is just TXA on a gauze shoved up his nose. We've been through these horrible nosebleeds before, post transplant, but they seemed to stabilize around the point of the intranasal TXA. Unfortunately, this time it did not work. The blood soaked the gauze almost immediately and started dripping off the end. The Fellow came in to see the amount of output and how much it was still bleeding and said there's nothing else we can do, we'll have to get ENT up here. Maybe 20 minutes later ENT arrived. He flushed 3 whole saline syringes up Eric's nose and "packed" it and removed a clot that was bothering Eric. Then he gave Eric a sucky thing like at the dentist to clean up his mouth, which made him so happy. The ENT process was quite unpleasant; at best it was uncomfortable, but parts of it really hurt. However, Eric was so relieved that the ENT made it better that he was actually happy. The second round of bleeding was 2 hours and we finally were able to order dinner at 8pm!
Wednesday morning, Eric's platelets were up to 66! We haven't seen that in a year! Yay for 2 bags of platelets! Unfortunately, they don't last for too long and his body isn't making them, so he'll still need another transfusion next week. Also, after the massive bleed, his hemoglobin was way down and he needed a blood transfusion. The doctor on Wednesday ordered blood and said she was in favour of monitoring for the day and sending us home late afternoon if everything was good. However, half the team wanted to keep Eric another night after his "hemorrhage." She came back later in the afternoon with discharge papers and told us we could go home after the blood transfusion. We were able to leave at 5pm and got home at 6pm to enjoy a delicious dinner prepared and delivered by a lovely friend and neighbour.
Following the nose bleed, they continued to give Eric IV TXA, and at home we have to give him oral TXA for another 24 hours. Luckily no additional bleeding and he continues to have no cold symptoms. However, his back and chest are quite sore from the awkward position he was in while his nose was bleeding. He's currently chilling on the couch on a heating pad and I think that is going to be our vibe for the whole day. We definitely need a hospital recovery day!
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