Yep... I'm finally pumpless for the next 11 days or so. But what a trip this has been this week! Last night (Tuesday), I ended up in St. Paul's Emergency. I was watching Canadian Idol (yayayaya Brian!!) and just before the end of it, I noticed the site where the needle goes into the portacath was leaking. Well, that could only mean one thing... it's leaking chemo because that is what goes from the pump thru the catheter to the portacath via the needle. Well
Once it was over (10pm), I called Mimi and Nathan who live upstairs and asked if they could drive me to Emergency. I figured that it probably was just not right that the chemo was leaking ;) Even though the pump was going to be coming off today at 1:30pm... that was still over 12 hours away and having the chemo not going where it was suppose to didn't seem like a good idea to me.
Soooo, off we went to Emergency. I told Mimi and Nathan not to bother waiting around with me. After all, we had no idea if I'd be there for 10 minutes or 10 hours. I could always take a taxi home since the hospital is only 7 blocks away :)
Well, I ended up being there 2 1/2 hours... but most of that is sit and wait. The staff were concerned about the leaking chemo but it was obvious that they do not get a lot of chemo patients coming in via Emergency and they had to have doctors look up the drug and figure out what they should do. Heck, I could have told them... lock off the catheter, take the needle out and replace it with a new one, then turn the chemo back on. Hey, I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but that made sense to me ;)
Apparently not to them. They had to look up the drug and see how toxic it was for skin contact. That's all fine and dandy, but meanwhile it is still leaking so if it IS toxic to skin, it's not going to get any better leaving it. Duh!
Anywho... eventually they got an IV nurse to come and unhook me. Then she wanted to rehook me up but couldn't find the portacath which is right under the skin because there was so much build up of fluid (chemo) that the portacath was under all the fluid.
Finally, she found it, put in the new needle/cath and rehooked up my pump. I then had to wait for the Emergency doc to come and check things out. He was very nice and wrote down everything which will go to my GP and Oncologist. I finally was set free and could go home :)
Today, I went to see my GP (Dr. Fay). He pretty much has the same attitude as I do. What's done is done, so will this have any affect on the future treatments or should we be doing anything different? Naaaa... he checked my skin and I am having absolutely no reaction to it having been exposed to the liquid chemo. I beez a tough old bird!! :D The fluid build up of last night is already being absorbed so there is nothing to indicate any problems.
He did give me a prescription for Cipro (antibiotic) which is for my back which had that infection flare up last session when I got so run down and feeling so sick because of the Oxaliplatin... so that will clear that up lickety-split, but I do have to finish off the cycle which is a 7 day supply. But, what the heck... if the chemo leakage was going to cause any problems, the Cipro will prevent any infection.
Soooo, here I am tonight, catching up on the blog and figuring out how to try and update the laptop with information that was on the desktop. Hehehe... I figure, the more I put on the laptop and get it up to date (hahaha... that could take forever!) then you know the desktop will come back all fixed up with everything intact :)
Okey dokey... guess I should wake the little diva schnauzer up and get her outside... hahaha... she likes this working with the laptop in the bedroom... she can sprawl out on the bed and snooze!
ta ta for now!
Cheryl
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