Life at Home

We made it home Thursday afternoon.  It's nice to be home.  J has actually put real clothes on.  No hospital gowns.  No pajamas.  He still has staples at his surgical incision, and the pants band crosses the staples.  We made that a little less irritating with a big abdomen pad, like a gauze on steroids.  

And what do you think he did when he came home?  Started writing Thank You notes for all the the neat gifts he has received?  Started catching up on a month's worth of homework?  Read books?  Of course not, he sat down on the couch and turned on the TV.  And that is what he has done.  At least until this morning when he played Settlers of Catan for a few hours on his Kindle and now is reading one of the neat books a classmate gave him.

His appetite has improved significantly.  Nothing like home cooking I guess.  

It snowed all day yesterday.  Welcome Spring.  I had imagined taking him on walks around the neighborhood.  Maybe in a week when Spring is really here.  

The IV antibiotics are pretty interesting.  Here's what the device looks like before and after it has been used.

On the left is a used "grenade" as the nurses call it.  The right grenade is for later today.  Not entirely sure how it works, but I suspect it's pressurized and when you release the lock on it, the pressure is slowly released, but the outflow is blocked by the liquid antibiotic, so only the antibiotic gets out.  Pretty neat.  

Mom goes through these steps:

1.  Wash hands for 20 seconds

2.  Remove stopper from the port line

3.  Thoroughly clean the end of the line with an alcohol swab

4.  Flush the IV line with 10 cc saline flush

5  Re-clean the end of the line with another alcohol swab

6  Attach the grenade and release the pressure (about 1 hour)

7  Remove the grenade

8  Re-clean the end of the line with another alcohol swab

9  Flush with 10 cc saline

10 Re-clean the end of the line with yet another alcohol swab (number 4)

11 Place enough heparin in the line that the part of the port inside the body has heparin in it to prevent clotting.

12 Repeat every 8 hours until back in the hospital

Sadly, I was not trained on this process, and have had to let Mom do it, even for the really early 6 am dose.  Wish I could be more helpful:)

Today we go back into the hospital.  He'll get lot of IV fluids tonight and then tomorrow morning we will start the chemotherapy again.

In the meantime, we plan to celebrate the arrival of more sunlight than darkness (aka Spring) with a  little BBQ.  I guess I'll have to clear the snow off the patio.  Mother nature is not doing it fast enough.