Results 1 to 20 of 184 for stemmed:blood
(Very kindly nurses quickly helped settle Jane in the room, which was very pleasant. Two of them were taking blood for some nine separate tests almost before we knew what was happening. Two of the blood cultures would take at least 48 hours, we were told, so I envisioned Jane being in the hospital for at least a few days. The nurses awkwardly put Jane in bed after sitting her on the commode. A thick foam rubber pad had been placed on the bed beforehand, however, and Jane found it to be very comfortable. Then at close to 10 PM a technician wheeled in a portable X-ray machine to shoot Jane’s chest. I placed the cold film holder under Jane’s back as she lay propped up on the mattress, but the whole task went quickly. Evidently Dr. K wanted the picture to check on blood clots perhaps breaking loose near the heart.
(I called the doctor not long after Peggy left. Dr. K. said, “I think I’d better take a look at that.” She’d been out of her office, but returned my call to her nurse almost at once. She was at the house by 6 PM, examined the finger and gave Jane a quick general checkup. She talked about a possible blood clot, “other causes,” and mentioned vasculitis, a condition that results in restricted capillary blood flow to the extremities, and can accompany arthritis. She’d suspected vasculitis when Jane had been first admitted to Arnot Ogden early in February, but tests had ruled it out. Dr. K. went home to call Dr. Sobel in Ithaca, and Dr. Wilwerth at St. Joe’s. The former is a rheumatologist who examined Jane at the Arnot, the latter is a specialist in circulatory matters. She soon called to say that Dr. Sobel was out of town for at least a week, and that Dr. W. didn’t think a clot was involved from the description she’d given him.
(The finger was turning darker, though. Massaging Jane’s lower arm helped. “If you were anyone else I’d have you at the emergency room at St. Joe’s for more blood tests,” Dr. K had told Jane at the house. She was obviously concerned, as were we. On her call, we asked her what she’d do on her own. She suggested we go to the emergency room for blood tests, and we agreed. A few minutes later, as I was hurriedly throwing a few things into a bag, Dr. K. called again, to say that we could save the emergency room fee if she had Jane admitted directly into a room. We agreed. Jane cried briefly. I turned the car around in the driveway, wheeled her out in her office chair, and managed to get her up onto the front seat, awkwardly and with discomfort. I’d called the Bumbalos, our neighbors across the street, for help, but they were away.
(Dr K., being still concerned about Jane’s finger—which had improved somewhat, but was still markedly bluish in cast—decided to prescribe a drug to dilute the clotting ability of blood somewhat: Persantine, in tiny pill-like form, to be taken three times a day. Dr. K. said this treatment had to be balanced against the added risk of infection of Jane’s one open bedsore on her coccyx, for the Persantine reduced the body’s ability to fight infection to some degree. This at once set up barriers in our thinking, but especially in Jane’s. Jane had also learned that everyone at the hospital was against her smoking, and had been told that nicotine helped restrict the blood flow in the tiny capillaries. In other words, one would be better off not smoking. When Jane said that Dr. K had said her lungs were okay while she was at the Arnot, Dr K. defended that analysis by reminding Jane that she’d said her heart was good, but that through the stethoscope she’d heard various “wheezings and gurglings” in Jane’s lungs. Not that the lungs didn’t look okay via X-rays.
[...] It’s to be cultured like the last blood sample. [...] I suppose they’ll want to take my temperature and blood pressure all over again, too.”)
(Jane’s temperature went back up last night: 101 around 10:30 p.m., and the same at about 3:00 a.m. She had blood taken before breakfast — we have no results. [...]
(Then, while she was still eating, two lab technicians came in to take more blood from Jane — this was for a culture that would be grown for a week, they said. [...]
[...] No sooner did we find that out than one of the two aides returned to take more blood — they “want all they can get,” Jane swore. [...]
[...] They did blood work this morning. They took blood just for the thyroid, though, after breakfast. Other tests, they have to take blood before you eat, so maybe they’ll be back tomorrow morning.” This is the first blood work in several weeks, at least.
[...] Carla took her temperature — 98.1. Diana took her blood pressure.
The condition is analyzed, the blood is sampled. It becomes “a blood sample” to the doctor. The patient may silently shout out, “That is not just a blood sample — it is my blood you are taking.” But he [or she] is discouraged from identifying with the blood of his physical being, so that even his own blood seems alien.
[...] It started your heartbeat, controls circulation of your blood, regulates digestion, assimilation, and elimination. When you eat a piece of bread, your subconscious transmutes it into tissue, muscle, bone and blood Your subconscious controls all the vital processes and functions of your body. [...]
[...] [No results in yet of blood tests taken a week ago at St. Joe’s. Tests sent to Rochester.] Jane got more and more depressed and scared as Dr. K. talked, I could see it, in spite of suggestions we’d agreed on before her visit. [...] Dr. K. wants Dr. Sobel from Ithaca to examine Jane Friday even if blood tests aren’t in yet: “I can give him the results over the phone later.” [...]
(During the visit, after he examined the finger, Dr. S. seemed to me at least a bit surprised that Dr. Wilworth had ruled out the possibility of a blood clot; because of its sudden onset I gathered Dr. S. thought this was a possibility. [...] Dr. S. also described a couple of drugs—penicillin being one—that was used to reduce the clotting ability of the blood—and also reduced the body’s natural defenses.
[...] While we were there Dr. K. called him and gave him the results of the blood tests begun in the hospital the week before: One was normal, one said vasculitis could be present, the third one didn’t work—so after all of that the results were very meager and frustrating. [...]
(8:25.) Ruburt also learned more or less of the ambiguous results of the blood tests held previously (last week). [...]
Now: Ruburt should remind himself that he has good blood—thus negating his mother’s statement that his father had poor blood—
Birds of curved dimensions
Have their neighborhood
Limited by ceiling’s
Weight of bone and blood.
[...] The condition however also raises body temperature (which Jane had noticed), so that certain necessary antibodies are released into the system that help clear the joints and purify the blood.
These measures also greatly relieve neck and shoulder tension and increase blood flow in such a way that necessary cleaning takes place in precisely those areas where pressure has initiated trouble at other points. [...]
I’ve done the best I could
with thy sweet heritage of blood,
one creature like all the rest
born from your power and benevolence,
graced to share in what you are
for your love’s multiplication
knows no prejudice,
so let me humbly state my thanks
I’ve always transferred my life to letters,
and one day it will reside
exclusively in written nouns and vowels,
clean paragraphs
distilled from mysterious life’s days.
Even before death’s event
I plan my mind’s resting place
as if there is a second life
in thought’s products that defies
the brain’s shorter span, and rises
sans blood, flesh, hand or eye,
self-contained, truly alive at last;
like some mental balloon
set on a safe course finally
through unexplored skies
when the hand that holds it
lets it go.