In An Instant

My sweet "Christian" was admitted to the hospital Sunday night because his Dad and I just could not access his port.  The next couple of days were filled with IV's and a port that had a nasty rash on the outside.  Last night the IV infiltrated the muscle in is upper arm.  It was pretty awful.  It was painful, swollen and needed pretty constant monitoring throughout the night.  It is healing well, but still a source of pain.

We had no other choice than to access his port. My husband I tried, the nurses tried…we had two people in the room then seven people and the strides we had made to helping his conquer his PTSD seem to have vanished within one difficult day.

Fortunately the surgeon who placed the last four ports came in and was finally able to access. 

The scariest part about this is not the screaming and tears and physical fighting that he does.  It's when we have no access into a vein and cannot get factor into his system, that we become a little panicked.  In an instant you can lose venous access and struggle to find a new site.

Just as we thought we may get to go home today my boy develops a fever.  Blood cultures have been drawn and now we wait.  Hopefully it is just a virus that has nothing to do with the port, but when you have a port, you have to assume the worst first.

I am so grateful for the "good run" of time without much incident.  But one thing I know for definite sure is that it could always be worse.