I have tried very hard not to write everything I am thinking and feeling about this hospital and the doctors and nurses we are dealing with. However, today I am especially upset with the way things are being done here. Cael has had a picc line for almost 10 weeks. It was put in at Dell, where the did a fine job. When we got to Texas Children's, we were told that he would need a new line put in that had 2 lumens. He needs to have 2 for when he is getting chemo and also needing another medication or TPN that is not compatible with the chemo. Basically, there would be 1 line that has 2 halves so the medicines won't mix.
Today, his picc line stopped working. The nurse wasn't able to get the labs drawn this morning, so she left a not for the vascular access team to come look at it. Well, it took them 10 hours to finally come and check on it, and they couldn't get it to work either. The medicines could go in, but they couldn't get any blood to come back out. This is a problem since they need to draw blood a couple times each day. Later in the day, they couldn't even get meds to go into the line correctly. It has become sluggish. So now, we are at the point that a new picc line is absolutely necessary.
They put in a regular IV in his hand until they can get the picc in. Well, Cael really likes to chew on his hands and use his hand to hold things like toys and his bottle. He cannot do that with the IV in his hand. Also, he keeps trying to put the IV end into his mouth. So now we are constantly trying to keep it out of his mouth, and keep him from pulling it out of his hand. Plus, they don't even know if they will be able to get a blood return from the IV. If not, they will have to stick him every time they need to draw blood.
They had 6 weeks to get the new line in, and they waited until the one he has stopped working. I am not happy that they waited until the line stopped working. They should have taken care of this awhile ago. I understand using the one he had while it was still working, but I don't think it should have gotten to the point where this one doesn't work at all.
The vascular access team is coming back tonight to try to use alteplase to clear the line. Hopefully it is just a small clot on the end of the line, or the inside of the line has become clogged. The line has been pulled out a little at a time for the past 10 weeks. It has come out 1.5 centimeters farther than it should be, so now it is out too far, which might be causing the problem. But yesterday it worked fine, so I'm just hoping it is something that can be fixed with the alteplase. Then they better get the new line in soon so we don't run into this problem again.
Another issue with all this is that since it took the vascular access team 10 hours to finally come and check it (it was about 4:00 PM when they came), they didn't get the value for his calcium until about 6:00. It is still high (1.38). I guess it was too late for the doctors to put in orders for something to be started to deal with the high calcium, because nothing has changed to deal with that. I'm hoping his calcium hasn't gotten higher tomorrow, due to them not doing anything about it tonight.
Ok, rant over. Hopefully this is all fixed and tomorrow I can stop stressing about the IV in his hand, and hopefully they will have a plan for his high calcium again and start it tomorrow.
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