October 13, 2008

Today has by far been the hardest day here. It started with the new IV location; last night she was saying it was hurting, but this is nothing new while she is getting the anti-viral medicine (it burns going in). This morning however, she was in miserable pain… she was curled up in the fetal position crying. Nothing seemed to help as it had in the past (heat packs). At some point the nurses and we noticed that it was starting to blister under the dressing (sticker that holds the IV down) and there was a blister just above the sticker. Right before our eyes a third blister appeared. They turned the medicine off immediately and took the IV out and took the dressing off. I expected this to break open the one blister, but it did not. At this point no one really knew “why” the blistering happened. There was no listed side affect for the medications that matched what was happening (nurses check that out), but they called the pharmacy and they advised that under rare cases the medication can burn from under the skin and cause blistering. NO WONDER she was in so much pain.

From there they called a wound specialist to come look at the blisters. They looked at it and stated that what they needed to do was numb the site and do five small injections around the blisters in order to push out the medicine trapped within the tissue. Sadie was not overly thrilled at this point (a) about having this horrible burning in the first place (b) having the blisters (c) now hearing she had to have five more pokes in addition to another IV line. She was not convinced that she wanted to do it, but the wound doc assured her that once numb she wouldn’t feel it. They numbed her and the pokes started. I have to say that was the worst 20 minutes I can remember in a long time. Not only was it not numb, but it was horrible pain for Sadie and she cried like I have not seen this girl cry!! Each shot was work to convince her that she could get through. The reason for the pain (per wound doc) was that the medication trapped in there was being pushed out and the medication itself is very painful. Once she was done they patched her up and said they would come check on it tomorrow.

For pictures visit our family site at: http://jordanfamilywalkworthy.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-bad-iv.html
Shortly after this one of the nurses came in to tell Sadie that they were going to have to give her additional fluid as her kidneys were showing signs (via labs) that they were not liking the medications. In addition they needed to cut back the dosage of anti-viral medication in order to give her kidney’s a break. I did ask the doctor once she came in if this will affect her treatment in regards to setting her back and she said it should not. They will re-draw labs tomorrow and see how she is doing with this.

All of this put us into the 4:00 hour… it was a long day, but the end of the day was good. Sadie had some much needed loving faces come visit her and by the end of the day she was happy and glad that she could start fresh tomorrow.