A Messy Wednesday

A picture is worth a thousand words... This is pretty much how the day went today.  

All this wasted IV tubing, needles, syringes and plasma

We had an infusion disaster tonight.  Even before that, the shipping company that our specialty pharmacy uses, got a little confused and they thought 'overnight' delivery, meant 'whenever you get it delivered' because we didn't get our shipment of Plasma until tonight.  These little things are so frustrating and irritating. Sigh...

I was drawing up the plasma into the syringe and from there, I have to prime the IV tubing.  I was pushing it through the tubing while keeping an eye on the two needles at the end.  The tubing is so tiny and really hard to push and really hard to see.  Sometimes, I need one of the boys to prime the tube because it's so hard.  Anyways, while I was focused on everything else, I didn't notice we had a bad syringe and plasma was spilling out the top.  The kitchen counter was covered in roughly $1000 worth of human plasma.  I immediately felt sick. 

I tried to salvage what was left in the syringe and re-sterilize everything to push back into the bottle it came in but that was sort of a disaster.  I had a bad feeling that it had already been contaminated so I had to dispose of it! This stuff is like liquid gold.  Any wasted drop is heart wrenching.  It takes thousands and thousands of people to donate plasma so that Shelbie can have one dose.  We do this 4 times a month. 

Now, she will have to go a week without a dose and that could be rough, especially this time of year.

Oh well, such is life.  Besides all that, we had a decent day.  There have certainly been some anxious moments.  Sam's dizziness is not improving and now his balance and equilibrium is off and he is feeling pain when he moves his head.  That worries me but I'm struggling to find a Neurologist.  We have such a near perfect team of doctors right now who are all a pretty good fit for us.  It's always stressful to find a new doctor to add to the mix.  We already have two neurologists but they don't deal with Chiari's so that's a bummer.

Anyways... 

I've continued to think so much about gratitude.  For the past few weeks I've had the same wandering thought...How did Christ show gratitude in his most difficult trial; when he knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane?  He must have.  Everything he did, was for a reason and purpose.  He lived the spiritual paradoxes of life perfectly.  We all grab hold of the fact that even He didn't want to do what he was asked to do.  That seems like something we can easily relate to.  Maybe the gratitude was in his willingness to bear the greatest burden ever, without complaint and with such humility and grace.  It's such an interesting thought to me and it's been consuming my mind for days. 

I have a very long way to go.  Right now, I'm working on letting the little molehills of life not turn into mountains of frustration.  I'm talking about the dumbest things, the last straws...the basically meaningless daily grinds.  Sometimes, it is the little things that push you over the edge.  So, I'm working on the little things.