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Nine days in the hospital and 18 bags of IV antibiotics later


Longjohn

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31 minutes ago, Chris... said:

Did I miss something? Why was she in hospital?

My wife has a Mediport, it was used for her chemotherapy and after that they use it for her bone treatments.  Once a month she has to go to the cancer care center and get her port flushed out to make sure it is still usable. July 1st she had her port flushed.  Two hours later she started running a high fever and had really bad chills.  She called her oncologist and she said to come back in immediately and get checked out.  Her doctor kept staff around after hours to run tests etc.  She sent us to the emergency room to start IV antibiotics and have the port removed.  We didn't expect to be there nine days.  Many doctors got involved, a doctor from the coronary unit got real involved and explained what a blood infection can do to the heart.  They ran many tests and kept pumping antibiotics in her all week. Finally the blood cultures came back clean and they were able to remove the port.  She is going to have to reschedule her surgery that was supposed to happen July 5th in Pittsburgh.  Here is an image of a port like the one she had. That lump below the collar bone is the port, it has a line running from it directly into the heart.  For chemo they inject into the port the drugs.  Most chemo drugs do too much damage to the veins to use them for very long.

Image result for mediport

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1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

You are making me very glad womaxx's port was removed last month.  I'm glad your wife is recovering from that part of the problem.

That is the first time she has had any issue with it. Her oncologist said they could use one of her veins directly for her bone treatment, it's not as hard on your veins as the chemo.  She has been using that port for seven years.

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3 minutes ago, Chris... said:

I'm glad she's out of hospital. When I saw the thread title it reminded me of the 10 days I spent in hospital with bacterial meningitis 

Did they have to keep changing the site of the IV on you?  My wife's kept fizzling out and they had to find a new site five times.  She was running out of veins, they were about to move to her legs to find a good vein.

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9 hours ago, Longjohn said:

Did they have to keep changing the site of the IV on you?  My wife's kept fizzling out and they had to find a new site five times.  She was running out of veins, they were about to move to her legs to find a good vein.

Several times. I had bruises from all of the IV sites. Then when I was released I had to get a shot in the ass everyday for a week. The needle was huge.

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