Crack in knee and blood test.

[Shopaholic100]

My 15 year old son is in A & E with a crack in his knee and swelling. Why would he need to have a blood test? He has a bandage on his arm, what they usually use for drips, sorry I’ve forgotten the name. He is in a hospital in another part of the country and I haven’t been able to speak to anyone the network is not great. Anyone any ideas?

They will have put a cannula in for fluids / iv pain relief.
I imagine they just do basic bloods to check there is nothing obviously underlying. They would probably do a full blood count, liver function & kidney function as some drugs can cause issues and if there are already (unknown) underlying issues with liver/kidneys or whatever, a drug they may prescribe could cause a serious problem so they know to use a different medication instead.

I hope you get to speak to someone soon. Do you have messenger/WhatsApp? Our local hospital has an awful signal for phone calls but the WiFi is okay so we can generally get to message/video call that way.

@Herecomesanothernamechange, thanks for your reply it was really helpful😀.

I can get signal in some parts of the hospital, so have managed to get a few WhatsApp messages. It would be great if I could talk to the Dr on my son’s phone as some of the information is unclear. Would a Dr do this? First they said he had a crack in his knee, then another Dr said he had a condition only 1 in 10 have where they have an extra bone in the knee. Then they said psysio would be arranged, then said it wouldn’t. They’ve sent him away, just said take paracetamol and rest it. So we’re still unsure what’s wrong.

The bloods are probably just that someone’s functioning on autopilot and thought that being as they were sticking a needle in for the cannula they might as well take some bloods and save him another needle if someone decides later that they think some are necessary. It’s not terribly cost efficient as a healthy 15yr old is pretty unlikely to have anything unusual show up, but happens quite often.

That’s fine, I just wish they would explain things better.

Assuming he injured it playing sport or similar?

He doesn’t recall having any injury, just woke up one morning in pain.

When they cannulate they almost always automatically take them. Just because

They can check if his infection markers are up by taking bloods too. If there's a chance of infection they can start anti biotics so it doesn't develop into something more sinister like sepsis.

They always put a cannula in and run blood tests. I wouldn't be overly concerned about this.