02/13/2013:

4:35: I am awaken by labratory.  They are coming into draw a peripheral culture.  She sticks my arm with no problems and takes a half bottle of blood for the culture.  She also pulls some blood for a blood test and trough.

4:50: My nurse comes in and takes 2 syringes of blood.  She first pulls a trash vial to clear out the fluids in the line, most of it blood.  She then pulls out 2 syringes and plunges them into the bottles.

5:05: She is done with the blood draws and head out.

5:10: I am up.  Just time to watch TV.

7:30: They come into pull vitals.  Everything looks good.

8:00: Breakfast arrives, YUMMY!

8:30: Done with breakfast.

10:00: The PA from Dr. Veith’s office comes and visits me and tells me I am being discharged.  She says that home health will be taking care of me, and that IV Solutions will be delivering some medicine that I will be hooking up myself to my port and pumping in.  During this meeting, IV Solutions calls my hospital room phone.  I let the PA talk t to the IV Solutions rep and they hash out the final details.  I then finish up the convo with the IV solutions rep and am told to call them when I get back to the house after being discharged from the hospital.  I then finish up with the PA.

10:15: I have the needle in the port removed.

10:30: I jump in the shower and get a quick shower so that I can be completely clean before going a few more days without being able to get the port wet for sterility reasons.

10:45: I am out of the shower.  I apply some more lidocane cream to my port area and sit in bed.  I am going to have them reaccess the port before I go home that way that is one less thing that I will need to count on home health for and I can give myself, with the help of my mom, a CRNA, the antibiotics.

11:45: Lunch comes.  They tell me to call them right when I am done lunch as she is going to take lunch as well, and then she will access my port.

12:15: I call the nurse, I am all done my Lunch.

12:20: The nurse comes in will the new needle and all the sterile items needed to clean my port area and re-access it.

12:35: My port re access is complete.

12:45: I call transport and sit down and wait for them to come get me.

12:55: While waiting for transport IV Solutions calls me and asks me when I am going to get home.  I tell them I am going to go get some Ashes for Ash Wednesday and then heading home.  She asks me if I have a hook up for Ashes or is it going to take a while.  I tell her I have a hookup.

1:10: Transport shows up.

1:20: I am put into the CRV my dad went down to get.

1:25: We are heading over to my mom’s work, at Tulane-Lakeside Hospital, one of the volunteers there is going to meet us outside and give me ashes.

1:45: We get to the Tulane-Lakeside drive up entrance and my mom and the volunteer comes out, I open the door, and she gives me ashes.

2:00: We get home, and I call the IV Solutions rep back.  She tells me that she will be there in an hour and a half to give me my medications and show me how to use it all.

3:30: The rep shows up.  Shows me how to flush the line and pull back blood, and then flushes the line again.  She then shows me how to check the medicine balls and tells me to run them at 9AM and 9PM.  Clean the port line tip, flush a lil, draw back some blood to make sure there is a blood flow, flush the rest of the saline.  Open the tip on the medicine ball, unpinch the pincher and make sure the antibiotic solutions flows, then pinch it back.  Then unhook the saline syringe and hook up the medicine ball, and unpinch both sides and let the Vancomycin flow into me for and hour, at which tie the ball would be completely deflated.  Once deflated, I should pinch the sides.  Unhook the ball, clean the port line tip again, push a saline syringe in for flushing, and then hook up a heparin syringe and push that into me to prevent any clotting in my line.

4:00: The rep heads on out.

5:00: Back to watching TV.

6:00: I doze off.

8:00: I wake up and eat some food.

9:00: My mom starts the medicine ball process.  Clean the tip, flush saline, pull back blood, flush the rest of the saline, test the ball out, hook the ball up, and then let it pump.

9:07: The ball is pumping into me.

10:10: The ball is done pumping.  My mom takes off the ball lead and cleans the tip, she flushes the line with saline, and then pushes the heparin into me.

10:30: I take an Ambien CR, and watch some TV.  Live Free or Die Hard is on.

11:59: The move is over and I head to bed.  I can feel the Ambien kicking in, not worth fighting it…