Matthew's appointment was at 12:00pm today. We stopped and got lunch on our way and headed down to St. Mary's. When we got their they did his weight right away so they could start making his IV bag over in the Peds Pharmacy.(I don't work in that one, but work "with" it. Meaning we take them meds and then they get them ready for Pediatric patients. A lot of them work both in Peds and down in Central where I work.) They gave us the private room today, we were so excited. It took a while for the IV start team to get there today and even longer for the lab tech for his blood draw. Arik was our IV guy today. He was very nice and fast. Since he got there about 20 minutes before the lab got there, he chatted with Matthew a little bit and checked his arms and knew exactly where he was going to poke. They were high five-ing and talking about CARS. The IV bag even beat the Lab up there. It was almost one when she finally got there.
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| Hanging out in his bed with Zack! |
Our plan was Zack was to sit in the chair in the corner out of the way. I gave him my laptop and got him in the chair and he didn't say a word or move an inch while we were getting Matthew going. I was so proud of him and I made sure I let him know.
They got Matthew's arm all cleaned up and I held him from one side as the nurse held his arm as tight as she could. Man does that kid have strong arms. It took The nurse and Arik to get him to straighten it out as I calmed him down. As soon as we were ready Arik poked him and it was done. He pulled the blood out for the test and got him cleaned up and taped up in no time! We lost just a little blood this time in the changing from then syringe to the port. We finally got the IV hooked up at 1:00!
He did really well through it all today. He has it down I think. For the first half of the treatment, every 15 minutes they have to come in and change the flow rate and check his blood pressure and temp to make sure he doesn't have any side effects. When he hears it ding he pushes his nurse button and then when she gets in there he gets his arm ready for the cuff and opens his mouth.
We had a visitor today! Auntie Blythe came over. She was early to work so she came over and sat with us. She is working at St. Mary's in the Domitilla building as a Patient Care Assistant(PCA). She hung out with us for over an hour. It was nice to have an Adult there with me to talk to for once.
We got done with the treatment at about 3:15pm. So his meds run for about 3 hours and then his flush runs for about 15. There is a lot of construction going on at St. Mary's right now. They have 2 HUGE cranes working right now on a new building that will be part of the St. Mary's campus. So we walked around to the other side of the building so that we could look out at them. Zack thought that was pretty awesome!
All and all it was a good day. Some of the test were back already this afternoon. There are 3 that are not in the normal range. Dr. Tung had told us that with Crohn's some tests will come back like that and she will watch them so that if its one that in not good, she will call us right away. The 3 are ones that have come back that way every time so I am not worried.
We will be attending the Crohn's and Colitis foundation Convention in the cities on March 2nd. I was supposed to work but one of the guys switched weekends with me so I could go! We are very excited about it.
