Post BMT day 239
+239
Day 6
We started the day with an iv extravasation. This is when an IV goes bad and tissue damaging medication flows into your tissues rather than your bloodstream. It’s painful and causes swelling. We knew when going to bed last night that Tates IV wasn’t great as it wouldn’t draw blood. They watched it hourly and less than 12 hours after placement it was bad. Thanks to our amazing nurse, it was caught early and shouldn’t require additional treatment. But, that left tate with no iv access for her antibiotics, fluids or lab draws. By tonight GI and ID had decided on a new broviac placement for Tate. But first she needed more ultrasounds to check for blood clots and more cultures. We are hoping for a surgery slot tomorrow but most likely it won’t happen until Thursday. She’s gone all day with no fluids and little nutrition so tonight we’ll add pedialyte to her formula j tube feeds and hope we can make it to surgery without any more peripheral line attempts or labs. Even for the culture draw tonight they were only able to get less than 1/2 of the blood requested for the tests. Hopefully it’s enough and doesn’t hold us up another day.
This morning Tim and I were able to take Tate to the hospital Halloween dog pawty. They were so cute in their toy story themed costumes. It was a nice change in hospital routine and felt great to be out in the cool air.
Being admitted to a general medical floor instead of the transplant unit this time brought some trepidation. We definitely miss our BMT nurses. But we feel so blessed this admission to have access to Tates amazing specialists and their teams as well as the medical team both last week and this week. And the nurses are always amazing! We feel heard and supported and genuinely cared for and I’m so relieved and grateful. Tate has 8 specialists outside of BMT. Coordination can be so challenging and often falls on me. This is the first time that I feel like I’m doing more riding than driving this roller coaster and am thankful (cause I’m really tired!) Tatum really has the best specialists team (after years of compiling) and it is making such a difference. She has lots of medical walls to break down (I do too) and I feel like this admission has been a great start to some emotional healing.