Thankful in different ways.

So I went to bed REALLY late this past Thanksgiving eve, fully expecting to be able to sleep in until 10 or so; late enough that I get about eight hours of sleep. These thoughts were pushed to the side by the phone ringing at about 7am. My sister calling, telling my girlfriend that they were taking my nephew, Mitchell, to the ER with a severe nosebleed.

Backstory: Mitchell has hemophilia (sub-type C) as well as von Willebrand's disease (sub-type IIb). This means that he's really prone to bleeding. We first got a clue about it (but didn't make the connection) when he got circumsized. Bled like a stuck pig. Anyway, we have to be careful about his typical toddler (3 ½ yo) life. On Thursday, he got a nosebleed starting around 4:30 in the morning. By 7:30, he was on the way to the ER. Now mind you, this isn't an SNL-version of Julia Child spraying blood all over the kitchen. This is just a constant -- non-stop -- bleeding episode.

We got to the hospital shortly after 8am, and my sis and her husband were there with the kids already. So they handed my neice, McKenzie (also a hemophiliac C) to us and went back to Mitchell.

By 10:00, we were let into the pediatric ER waiting room (duh, it's where they were and we were stuck in the regular ER) and were able to move back and forth a little into Mitchell's room. My sis was wiping his bloody nose constantly but it was a wipe/wait/bleed/repeat process. They were going to give him a platelet infusion to stem the bleeding some pending hearing from the hematology doc that Mitchell sees. His platelet count was about 10,000; normal being 150,000 to 350,000. While they were waiting, it was decided that we would take McKenzie back to my sister's place, since she was getting cranky from lack of sleep and lack of nappage. We left about 11:00.

We got to the house around 11:30 and proceeded to just vegitate. McKenzie napped in the car on the way home but that was about the end of it. My gf tried to put her down for a nap around 1pm but she was having none of that. So we sat around and watched TV and tried to entertain McKenzie. I was very popular with her by wadding up pieces of newspaper and bouncing them off her head. She thought that was great fun.

By 3pm or so, it was plain that there would be no Thanksgiving for us. Sis had put together all the fixin's but we didn't know when they'd be home. It was obvious it wasn't gonna be any time soon. They admitted Mitchell for observation and didn't give him the platelet infusion, since the bleeding was gradually slowing. We scrounged and found the pink salad that we have for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. Mom started it, Sis continues the tradition. It's good yet weird, and it isn't a holiday without it. There's Cool Whip and mandarin oranges in it and cottage cheese. That's all I know for sure. I just eat it.

So that's how the afternoon progressed into evening. I was tossing paper off McKenzie's head and she was having a pretty good time. Everyone got home around 7:30 or so and Mitchell was fine, though bloody. He definately needed a bath! He was tired but OK, thankfully. We decided to leave pretty quick after that, meeting userinforiffalike in Canton for Chinese buffet. How traditional is that???

Ironically, everyone at the hospital got turkey for dinner and they gave Sis and B-i-L a plate, too.

Pass the California rolls, please.