Bone Marrow Aspiration and Biopsy

My father sent her blood sample to the lab on the morning of October 2nd. He received the results the next morning sometime before 9am. By 10:30am, our family was in the ER and, a few hours after that, she was transported to the hospital’s ICU. Her oncologist immediately ordered a bone marrow aspiration and biopsy. We were already anxious due to the possible diagnosis, but were additionally apprehensive because we knew that this was a stressful, invasive, and possibly painful procedure. 

My youngest sister, Chris, found that this procedure is usually done with a local anesthetic, but there was also an option for sedation. We were hopeful, but found that we weren’t allowed the luxury of time for anything outside of a local. They gave her a dose of Ativan, for stress relief, but didn’t even give it time to kick in as they had her on her stomach 5 minutes after administering it. Chris escorted our mother out of the room, she couldn’t stand to watch. My father opted to stay and Steph wanted her big sis there to hold her hand. That was fine. I wanted to be there to be strong for her. I’ve always protected her from the time we were little and that wasn’t about to change. His assistant asked if I wanted to have a seat, that the procedure was a little intense for some people. I told her I would be fine.

The oncologist gave her two injections to numb the area of her hip they were working on. She winced slightly from the stick, but the numbness set in quickly. Next, he quickly made an incision with a scalpel to ease the insertion of the thick, hollow needle used to extract bone marrow samples. She said that she felt a bit of pressure, but no pain.

Next, he inserted the needle to extract some fluid. She was fine, didn’t feel a thing. After that, with what seemed like quite a bit of force, he proceeded to extract a bone marrow sample. She squeezed my hand and winced a little more. Later, she would tell me that it felt a little uncomfortable and slightly achey when he did that, but not as bad as she imagined at all. I asked her to describe an equivalent pain so that I would have something to compare it to. She said that it wasn’t as bad as stubbing your toe. Haha. 

Unfortunately, it was what he had called a “dry tap” and he was unable to get as much sample as he wanted on the first draw and had to do the whole thing over again. Steph was pretty ok, though. He was very surprised at how well she handled the procedure. At one point, he had expected her to feel some pain and asked how she was doing. “Fine.”, she replied nonchalantly. I was impressed.

We expected her to feel some pain after the anesthesia wore off and to have some bruising. Nada. She didn’t even need a band-aid. She never asked for any pain medication.