Giving Jesse her shot is pretty traumatic on a daily basis. But changing her dressing around her CVL is a 30 – 60 minute scream fest.
We normally start out by “painting ” her dressing tape with detach all. Yesterday I only had the crappy worthless pads from the home healthcare company. If they ever give you those, look at them and say are you nuts? The pads are obviously a way for them to cut costs. The detach all from the hospital is a vial that you break, and the solution gets where it needs to be. (TIP: Let is sit for 30 minutes if you can, makes it easier)
As you can image, since the pads didn’t work… it was awful. Her skin there is sensitive anyway.
After the tape change and cap change she was done. Jesse zonked at 5:30pm making me nervous. While I detest tape changes, cap changes make me down right paranoid. The caps are at the end of her CVL. That CVL is a line directly into one of her blood vessels close to her heart. If bacteria get into that line… not good. This is one of the reasons that if Jesse has a fever higher than 100.4 F, we have to go to CHKD on an emergency run. They have to get her on antibiotics and culture her caps to make sure the fever isn’t from an infection there.
Knock on wood she’s fine, save that she woke up from her 4.5 hour nap at 10pm and was up till 1am. But she was up and happy. That is all that matters 🙂
Her sister, Chris, on the other hand was out. She’s hilarious when she sleeps (she sleeps like her uncle Bert). All over the bed.