Jasmine Stalker-Firth

Yesterday morning, under the supervision of the community nurse, Neil gave Jasmine her weekly epo injection. Erythropoietin is a protein that is made in the body by the kidney. It causes the bone marrow to produce oxygen-carrying red blood cells. But as Jasmine’s kidneys don’t do this, she needs the synthetic epotein which does the same job in preventing anaemia.

Typing this now, I wish I had taken a picture of this milestone. He had his latex gloves on, Jasmine in his arms, all good to go. We were so focused on what we were doing, that we never thought about it. Next time when things are a bit more familiar, we will do a reconstruction of Neil injecting Jasmine. And after a few more injections under supervision, we will just do it ourselves and not have to wait in for the nurse anymore and can spend the time in the sunshine.

Neil said that it was fine. We have both practised so much injecting the little rubber ball and Jasmine has quite nice chubby thighs now, so it was nice to be doing the real thing. Jasmine was fine about it. She was crying before the injection because she gets upset about being restrained, rather like when we hold her head straight whilst I repass the NG tube. She doesn’t get upset at the actual action: NG tube or injection. Understandably, it is not being able to wave her legs or head about that is upsetting.

Neil’s only problem is that the latex gloves made it hard to inject the epo as they made him lose his sense of touch. We are going to ask GOSH about whether gloves are necessary. At the hospital (and in the community) nurses wear them to reduce the risk of cross infection between patients. So they use purple gloves for various activities like feeding and nappy changing. And then they use sterile latex gloves for injections and connecting patients onto dialysis. We don’t, we wash our hands for three minutes, as we only have one patient. Yesterday, Neil washed his for one minute and then put on the gloves.

Perhaps doing our usual thing will be better, for us, and we can do a little bit for the environment. With all the equipment we use and can’t recycle because of health/infection risks, we are not doing a great deal for the environment at the moment. The plus side (if there is one), we can’t go on holiday, we don’t own a car and we live in a very small flat, so perhaps we counteract all the bad stuff we do. Jasmine’s deliveries arrived yesterday and we seem to have an awful lot of boxes piled up in the corner of our bedroom. Neil has to climb over me to get into bed. Any excuse.

Jasmine’s singing is just fantastic. She was thrashing a bit in her cot at 4am, she does this when she is uncomfortable, so I picked her up to wind her, which she did herself instantly and fabulously, and then when I lay her back down, she started to sing again, 4am is early, even for her.

I am sure Jasmine recognises tunes. Everytime I sing Corinne Bailey Rae ‘Put your records on’ , she smiles as if she is thinking: “Ah yes I like this song.” She also likes Ray Charles, Pavarotti, and Barry White, especially when the last two duet together. There are so many songs to show her on YouTube. We had a viewing session together last Saturday and she was mesmorised. And then we watched Wimbledon. How cool was our Saturday?

Today we are going out to lunch and then watching the William’s sisters Final when we get back, as that should be a good bit of tennis, and a pleasant way to spend the day.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 10:34 am and is filed under home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.