Serious Business

This continuous infusion of chemotherapy is serious stuff.  More determined than a stork delivering a baby (highly accurate medical information on this blog).  More consistent than the mail service.  No breaks for a shower (although J thinks that a bed bath is key to happiness).  His IV pole is his new constant companion and must be with him wherever he goes.  This is what I found when I came into the room tonight:

This is his IV pump.  What is the meaning of this?


It looks pretty mysterious.  Is it some light shield for the light sensitive chemotherapy?  Nope.  The nurse forgot his black rag on the IV pump?  Nope.

This is the shirt that J was wearing for the last three days (another secret to happy living).  He didn't realize when they started the continuous infusion that his dirty, stinky shirt would be stuck on him until the treatment was over.  The problem is that the IV tubes were coming out through the neck of his shirt (as shown in the picture).  Once he had enough of this shirt, he took it off and it was a hostage of the IV tubing.  It is so important that the infusion is uninterrupted that they can't even pause the infusion for the 15 seconds it would take to unhook an IV connection and remove the shirt.  Nothing gets in the way of chemotherapy.  He is now in a hospital gown (yet another source of happiness).  The sleeves snap together and he can run the IV tubing wherever he wants to, and he doesn't have to interrupt treatment.

This is also how serious things are while he gets chemotherapy.

Yep, not much to do when you are tied to a pump.  J decided to sleep.  So did Mom (she's on my bed right now, I'm sure after this is all through if she ever threatens me with sleeping on the couch, I will do whatever she wants, so uncomfortable).  This was before he was tired of his shirt.

He learned sphygmomanometer tonight.  It's a blood pressure cuff.  Fancy word.  He's getting quite the education in the hospital.