Darren LeBlanc

So today was chemo. That’s not the big story though…

The big story is that Misty got 15 needles this week. When you are on IV chemo your veins tend to get hard and don’t want to give up any blood, or even let you stab them to get an IV line in. Misty had her MRI a few days ago and it took them 3 tries to get a line in (they put a dye in her blood to contrast better in the scan). Then she had to get her blood taken on thursday (they took 6 pokes to get it right – and blew out 3 of her veins!). So we are up to 9.

Now, the outpatient chemo areas are generally filled with nurses who are extraordinarily good at setting up IV lines and taking blood. That’s basically what they do all day and the people who are best at it get sent there because the chemo patients are particularly hard. So Misty showed up today and was greeted by a very nice nurse who tried to get a line in and quickly called the most senior nurse in the center. Well, try as she might…she wasn’t able to get a vein either. So, the last hope is the IV nurse (a nurse whose job is to get IVs in when no one else can). The IV nurse shows up and spends about 30minutes trying to get a line in. 2 more pokes…and no luck. Then she brings in the ultrasound machine to try to find misty’s veins with that…lots of jelly all over her arms…but no luck.

So finally she takes misty out into another room to do a small procedure called a Midline IV Catheter. Basically, she put a thin tube deep into misty’s arm (this was needle #15 on the week!!) so we could actually get blood and give her the chemo. So after 3.5hrs of poking…we were ready to get started.

The rest of the day went ok. Misty is feeling pretty sick/exhausted…but we expect that.