Stem Cell Transplant: Day: +56

08/05/2013:

5:30: I am awaken for vitals and another Lovenox shot, blah..

6:00: I am right back asleep.

8:00: I am awake, normal morning routine, plus adding Lidocane Cream to the port area to deaden it so I don’t feel the needle go in when they access my port in my chest.

8:45: Out the house we head.

9:05: We get to Tulane.

9:10: I check in at the front desk.

10:15: We are called to the back.

10:30: They access my port, but have issues drawing back blood, this is normal, as its positional.  I tell them that this is normal, and I just need to move my arm around till we get a blood return for the blood test.  However the nurse is too impatient to wait for me to move my arm around to the right spot to draw back the blood, another nurse steps in and just says order we can stick him, I said ha, good luck on that, everytime I am attempted to get stuck, no one can get it, and I have to call down Anesthia to use the ultrasound machine to find my veins to try to stick them then with plenty of Lidocane, no one is sticking me without Lidocane!  They then decide that they are going to try to order some cathflo.  I don’t even bother explaining again that I am positional and I just have to find the right spot, as they have already made up their mind what they are going to do.  I am sent back to the waiting room while they get the approval to order the cathflo.

11:15: The Cathflow approval has come in, I go to the back and get the cathflo put into my port line, I am told to come back in 30 minutes.

11:45: The nurse comes and gets me, as last time it took almost 2 hours for cathflo to work in my picc line.  We walk back to the back, she is able to get some blood return, but then it stops.  I tell her if I move my arm around enough we’ll get more, she instead pushes the cathflo/blood mixture back into me and also flushes a little to get the blood out of the line, which I am thinking, we just flushed the cathflo out the line as well.  They send me back to the waiting room for another 30 minutes.

12:15: I go back to the back and she tries to start pulling blood again, and I start moving my arm around again, this time we find the sweet spot and the blood starts flowing.  She fills a trash syringe, and then gets the real syringe.  The bloodflow slows down for the real syringe, I move my arm again just right and it really starts flowing and takes no time to fill the syringe.  I am then sent back out to the waiting room to wait for the results.

2:00: We get the results, and I don’t need any replacements, so out the needle will come, we go back to a secondary smaller lab for her to simply pull the needle out and put a bandaid on it.

2:10: We are back in the car heading home.  My wife’s back starts acting up again, when we are just around the corner from Tulane, so we pull over to a side street and switch positions, I will drive us home, hmm, I haven’t driven a car in 2 months, hope I remember how to do this 😉 LOL

2:15: I am driving us back home…

2:45: We get home.  I eat a  piece of left over salmon from last night, then in the lazyboy I rest.  My wife is resting on the sofa.

4:00: I doze off into a nap…

6:00: I am awaken for my Lovenox shot, blah.

6:30: Shrimp fettuccine for supper.  Pretty good 🙂

7:30: Back in the chair I go.

8:30: I get a call from a client.  I his compute is running extremely slow.  I start a number of scans on the computer remotely. It’s just taking forever to do everything because of how slow the computer is running.

11:45: I am off the phone with the client, we will pick this up tomorrow.  I leave a third scan running on his computer overnight.

11:55: Bath/shower time.

11:59: Rubber Ducky, another day gone!

© Craig
CyberChimps