Love Hurts

B is for Blood Transfusion Part 2

Everyone turned to look at Jay with sympathetic expressions once they read the panicked, worried one on his own face. Will stepped up to him.

"Hey we need to talk. I'll explain everything." Will said as he guided Jay out of the room.

"No Will, I have to stay. I need to see her. I need to be with her." Jay insisted.

"She's ok. She's stable. Let's go talk and I'll explain what's going on "

"If she's ok then why is everyone in there with her, Ms Goodwin doesn't just go to check on regular patients in the ED"

"No she doesn't. Its because Ellie is one of us. Of course she'll get the best care. Jay, come on. Let me explain what's going on to you. Then I promise you can be with her. She's going to want you here when she wakes up"

Jay released a breath and nodded. Will ushered him out of the room and into the doctors lounge. They both took a seat at the table in the doctor's lounge.

"Ok what the hell is going on? She was fine this morning," Jay said before abruptly stopping. Will noticed the change of expressions on his face.

"Jay, what? What is it?"

"She seemed fine when we woke up. We took a shower together, she was fine then too" Jay explained ignoring Will's raised eyebrows at the mention of the two showering together. "We got out and she seemed ok, I stayed in the bathroom to shave while she went into the bedroom to change. She went into the bathroom to put her makeup on while I went to go make breakfast. I made coffee and toast. When she came out I handed her the coffee and she started to stumble. I grabbed the coffee and I grabbed her to steady her. She told me she was lightheaded, that she needed to eat something. So she ate some toast. But she promised me she felt better when she left."

Will just nodded at the information he had just been given.

"Jay, have you ever heard of a disease called Lupus?"

"Uh yeah I've heard of it a few times. Didn't Elvis Presley have that? "

"Yeah, he did. It was on his autopsy report. Ok well Lupus, short for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus or SLE as we call it is an autoimmune disease. "

"Are you saying Ellie may have this disease?"

"No I'm telling you she does have it. "

"Wait, did she already know about this? "

Will nodded. "She was diagnosed when she was 13. She's been dealing with it for awhile now. She pretty much had it managed but she's started to have symptoms reoccur so she had a blood test run today and she was literally talking to me about it. She said she was going to talk to you tonight, she wanted to wait to see what her blood results said but she didn't get the chance, she collapsed."

"Ok so what exactly does this Lupus do?"

"Okay well like I said its an autoimmune disease. It's hard to explain it but it works like HIV or the aids virus does, its just not the sexually transmitted kind. In alot of cases, it's found to be heritary. It attacks all the organs of the body."

Jays eyebrows rose in amazement.

"I should say it can attack all the organs of the body, skin, eyes, mouth, and internal organs as well, gastrointestinal organs, kidneys, liver, heart, blood. But lupus works differently in everyone. "

"Ok give me the condensed version for now. So I can go be with her. Is she going to be ok?"

"Yeah we think so. The blood test she had run earlier earlier, showed us that her blood platelet count is rather low. Also how we indicate lupus is a test called ANA in the blood. A positive lupus test will have an ANA of 1 to 240 ratio. The higher the ratio will determine the higher the process of the disease. Ellie's ratio was 1 to 1250. The DNA ratio in the blood was also positive. A positive DNA test is 1 to 120. Hers was 1 to 640. A high positive DNA test shows the activity of a lupus flare."