About Last Week...

Well, we made it out of the hospital in one piece, but it was no easy feat. It took the entire weekend to fully recover from Brooklyn's 18 hour ER stay followed by a night spent in the Hem/Onc ward. They finally released us on Thursday night after it was determined that Brooklyn was pretty severely dehydrated. Her stomach had stopped functioning entirely so she refused to eat or drink anything. This in turn caused her heart rate to be as elevated as it was. We still don't know what caused the fever, be it viral or bacterial, the antibiotic kicked it somehow. It's really bizarre, the cultures and blood tests came back negative for every common illness. We will likely never know what caused her temp to spike like that, but I'm glad it happened because I would have never known her heart was working overtime if we hadn't had to rush to the hospital.

So. Several bags of saline and many doses of laxative later, Brooklyn's heart rate went down. She was on the mend and headed home. I really have to stay on top of her about pushing fluids which has become a full time job these days.

I wish the drama ended there. It didn't. The next morning we returned to Children's at 5:30 am for Brooklyn's weekly lumbar puncture. When the nurse went to access Brooklyn's PICC line, she found that she was unable to flush it with saline. Three more nurses tried unsuccessfully and finally the hospitals "Central Line Guru" was called in. She did all sorts of voodoo on the damn thing and finally determined that the line was clotted and needed to be removed. She then called up our oncologist, Dr. Baskin and announced in her thickGerman accent "This child needs a chest port!" I guess Dr. Baskin approved because the Guru hung up without saying another word. Without hesitating, she walked over to Brooklyn and pulled out her PICC line. You could see the blood clot extending through the entire length of the 12 inch tube that once led directly to her heart. It was clear that the nurse the night before had failed to flush the line with Heparin, the one thing that keeps the PICC from clotting, when she unhooked Brooklyn's saline lock.

This frustrates me for multiple reasons. Mainly because I have spent the better part of two months OBSESSIVELY taking care of that stupid PICC line to make sure something exactly like this didn't happen and all it took was one overextended nurse to undo my weeks of fastidiousness . Additionally, it means that Brooklyn will now have her new central line for the entirety of her treatment as opposed to the 4-6 month timeline we were given in the beginning of all of this (the port sits under the skin in the chest and requires surgery to remove). On the bright side, I will no longer have to do PICC home care because the port is maintenance free. Plus she can bath and swim now, which I know makes her happy (bath time had become quite miserable since the PICC could not get wet).

Anyway, we are back on track following a couple of speed bumps. I have no intention of ever returning to the ER again. I hope that Brooklyn's treatment continues on an incident free path after this last week.