Thursday, June 22, 2006

Flushing and Dressing

The medical supplies arrived late yesterday afternoon. Michael played five little piggies with David's toes while I prepared the flushing tray. His lines flushed perfectly. I repeated the procedure this morning by myself and feel like a pro now ;-) Everything must be sterile and clean, my hands, the tray, everything. Cleanliness is not my forte so please pray I learn (the easy way, not the hard way) to be extra careful. The girls were soooooo interested, asked many questions.

God provided another blessing that I'm so thankful for. A woman called late last night to tell us she is our home nurse. What a surprise! We never asked for a nurse, but God must know that we needed one. Our insurance allows her to come six times before the BMT. She told me not to worry about the central-line dressing change. She will take care of that. I was not worried about changing the dressing. I feel confident and competent with such things. Now I have one less thing to worry about.

David's central line is puffy and swollen between the area of insertion and exit, right above his breast. It is tender and there is a small bruise. The exit site looks good, no bleeding or redness, no oozing or fever. The home nurse said it is normal, that sometimes the doctors have a hard time getting the line in so maybe the swelling is due to that.

We are counting down the days. We are taking extra precautions to avoid sicknesses, like limiting our exposure to crowds and other children when possible.

Thank you all for your prayers, emails, and words of encouragment. We have our good days and bad. Your encouraging words come at just the right time. We appreciate all the attention...I'm getting a little spoiled from it all.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello Aimee,
I was just checking in on David and had to tell you I remember being quite frightened at how sanitariy everything needed to be for Gyasi while changing his dressing and flushing his CVL. I became a serious pro at it and wasn't as blessed as you are to have the in-home nurse come bye to do it. FYI, after transplant it becomes seriously painful to take the tegaderm tape off of him because of the excessive hair they growth they experience. Gyasi's sisters began to cry listening to him crying but one day when my neice an nephew were visiting, they began to sing songs and it distracted Gyasi so much that he didn't cry as much and we got finished in half the time. Just thought I tell you of how the girls could be helpful in that situation.
Gods Blessing be with you
Mjulela