Today I had to access Nathan's port at home. We numb his skin first with a cream so the needle going in barely hurts. If you told me that some day I would be able to stick a needle into my child's chest without a second thought I would have told you you were nuts!
The before pictures would have been of me spending about 10 minutes drawing medicines and flushes into syringes and setting out all the supplies for the port access.
Afterwards, I put some gauze under the needle and a tegaderm bandaged of the the needle to protect it. He can keep it in for a week. I gave him a medicine that has to be pushed in over 15 minutes so I just sit and watch the clock and very slowly push in 10 mls. Then I flush the port with heparin to keep it from being clotted. Correction - HE flushes it. He insists on doing all the syringe pushes that he can.
5 comments:
Sounds like the folks at the clinic think so, the way they let you keep the kids home recenlty. If I ever need my port accessed, I know who to call.
Jeesh Susan, I can't believe what they let people do at home. It definitely makes your life easier (not having to go to the clinic for everything), but the nurses in the ICU/CCU where I work aren't even allowed to access people's ports. We have to call the IV team (specially trained in that) to do just that. You have a heart of gold... just keep doing what you're doing. Nathan looks so happy even though he's being stuck. HUGS!
You are incredible... and yes you deserve more than an honorary nursing degree. :-)
You're amazing.
There's something beautiful about those pictures.
That's heavy lifting if ever I saw it.
*sigh* woman.
I so heart you.
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