Day 125 (D -13)
I' m sorry that I've been out of the loop for the last few days, but I've been feeling out of sorts and appointments have kept us running. Tuesday night I had a little scare and had to be taken to the emergency room. This one was a real winner. I'd had my catheter replaced that afternoon and for the most part, everything went off well. The nurse that inserted the new catheter had problems with blood return on it and started getting a little agitated. It's important that you're able to draw blood from the line because it shows that the catheter has been place correctly among other reasons. After several trys, she was finally able to draw blood out of my lumens. I was also prescribed a magnesium intermate the same day and it was the largest amount of magnesium that I've been prescribed in one sitting. Well, Chris hooked me up when we got back to the apartment and as the night progressed, I kept feeling pressure building up on my chest. It was an unusual feeling. I could feel the tube inside my chest pressing against my skin while simultaneously, I could feel this intense pressure under my bandage. It was close to midnight when I finally looked at my bandage and I could see that there was an area all around the gauze under the bandage that looked like it had stretched away from my chest and when I poked it, it felt liquid. My natural conclusion was that the magnesium had backed out of the incision in my chest and was trapped by the tegaderm bandage.
I told Chris and we rushed to the emergency room at MD Anderson. We waited for an hour before we were admitted to a room. Here's my favorite part. I'm worked up about what's going on because the line leads directly into my heart and I'm exhausted because it's late and I haven't been getting more than 5 hours of sleep a night, so I'm more than a little cranky. When the doctor comes in to examine me, I'm ready to snap. He asks me what's going on and when I tell him he immediately puts both hands on my bandage and pulls. I'm freaked out because I'm thinking that there's pressure built up in my chest, not to mention the fluid that's already leaked under the bandage. As soon as the doctor pulled the bandage half off, the pressure released and I felt better immediately. There was no liquid and the catheter was fine. It turns out that the bandage was put on too tight and that was causing the feeling of pressure on my heart. The doctor looked at me like I was crazy and asked me if I was satisfied that that was the cause. I think I get a pass on this one since he's going to charge me a fortune for what literally amounts to ripping off a band-aid.
We didn't get home until after 2am and even then, we didn't get to bed until around 3, since Chris had to change the bandage that the nurse put on. It was pretty slap-dash. Chris did a great job, though.
So, I'm a few days out of being admitted to the hospital. I'm not looking forward to being in lock down for thirty days or more. I know it's something that I have to do and I'm slowly wrapping my head around it. It's strange to think that I'll be a newborn next Wednesday. My new immune system won't be acclimated to the world at large and I'll have to be incredibly careful. As the day gets closer, I get more anxious.
