Pump it up

Day 86

When ever I hear someone escaped a hospital I always think of Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest throwing the fountain through the hospital window and escaping after suffocating his best friend McMurphy. Ann escaped the hospital today but in nowhere near as dramatic a fashion.

The truth is that she couldn't stand it there anymore this time around. This time around was just too unnerving for both of us to want to stay there any longer. We couldn't actually take her IV pole and pumps out of the hospital but luckily there is a device MDA is now using that allows the patients to do some of their chemo without being in the hospital at all.

It's a portable peristaltic pump manufactured by a company called Gemstar and its pretty neat. It is stored in a small black nylon bag, that looks like a big fanny pack, along with one bag of chemo. A tube runs from the bag through the pump and into Ann's CVC. I think of it like a combination purse and poison dispenser...just kidding.

The drug that we were sent "home" with is the weirdly red Doxorubucin. We have both been cautioned that should we have to open the bag containing the pump and the chemo drug at any time that gloves must be worn. Any contact with skin must immediately washed off and then reported to MDA right away. Nice to know that the drugs that treat cancer also can cause cancer. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad...I think I would prefer to share that fate with Ann rather than be without her.

Anyway I took a picture of this stuff and well my camera phone just doesn't do it justice.

Even though we are back at the apartment round 5 isn't over. The Gemstar is programed to run until Midnight Monday and then I have to drive Ann to the emergency room and have it unhooked. However we might have to go back before that. The pump is twitchy sometimes and will report "air in the line" or that it is "occluded" for no obvious reason and then needs to be restarted.

The nurses at MDA gave me a list of things to do when the pump encounters a problem but most of them involve unhooking the IV line and wasting some of Ann's medicine. So I have quietly filed all of the papers except for the one with the Transfusion Unit and Emergency Room's phone number. If the pump goes off again I'll just call them and they can tell me what they want me to do...it's really just easier for everyone that way around.

Right now Ann is sleeping and I'm going to go and try to figure out what I can make her for diner.