Quite an afternoon and early evening.
At 3:30 Gabe had his first post hospital infusion of factor 8, the clotting factor largely absent from his blood. We drove a circuitous route through the new homes built on the site of the old Stapleton Airport.
We crossed out of that development into a poorer neighborhood, the one in which Jon and Jen both teach. It is also the location of a former Army base now occupied by the university of Colorado. It is also the site of the old Army hospital plus several new buildings that now constitute the University hospital.
In an old Army hospital building, with a wonderful Art Deco lobby, and old, undecorated halls and rooms is the hemophilia and thrombosis center. In there the women who staff it made kind noises and praised Gabe’s beauty.
We went back into a procedure room and there the nurse practitioner found a vein near Gabe’s left ear and slid in a needle attached to a line. She first drew blood to retest his factor level (occasional misdiagnosis), then inserted the hypodermic containing the factor into the line and pushed it into his bloodstream.
It works immediately and in fact aids in clotting the puncture created by the needle.
Gabe whimpered, then went quiet. In a minute Amy had a gauze patch over the puncture site and held it for about five minutes, just to be sure.
2 hours later, at Jon and Jen’s home, Rabbi and Jeweler, Jay performed a wonderful ritual. Jay and I hit it off. I held Gabe’s legs while Jay, the mohel, cut the foreskin in two practiced movements. There’s more to this, but I’m in a hotel lobby and I feel the need to move on. Later.
