Sunday, May 29, 2011

When It Rains, It Pours!!!

When it rains, it pours.

Wednesday I found out that my insurance will not cover me at Temple. I wasn't happy with the news, but what bothered me the most was that they waited 3 months to figure that out and tell me. We are in the process of trying to figure out how to approach this and what we should do next. There are a couple options we can look into, but it still doesn't look too promising.

Then on Thursday morning after work when I went home to hook up my TPN my PICC site was all red and nasty. I know it had been hurting at work that night, but it occasionally had done that in the past so I wasn't too concerned. So I had to drive all the way back to Geisinger and they said it was bad and it had to come out. (which means no TPN and no nutrition) Then they scheduled me for surgery the next day to have a tunneled cather placed (also known as a Broviac or Hickman catheter).

After coming home again my arm then started with a nice red streak going up it. After phone calls to the GI clinic and a visit with a home health nurse I had to come back to Geisinger and go to the ER. They gave me a dose of IV antibiotics and had me come back first thing in the morning to see if they would still do the procedure or not because of the infection.

So Friday I came to Geisinger for 7 am. They did decide to go ahead with the procedure. After the procedure was over and they were getting ready to discharge me when I stood up my heart rate jumped into the 150-170's. So they had me sit a rest awhile and they decided to give me a bolus of normal saline to see if that would help any, but it didn't. Then it was decided that they thought my mediport catheter was tickling my heart, so they decided that they would go in on the other side and pull out the mediport and clip the catheter and then put it back in. So I spent all day at Interventional Radiology then waiting for them to do this second procedure.


I had a little bit of a rough time during that procedure, but after it was over my heart was still acting up. After a few phone calls and discussion, they figured my heart was beating so fast because of dehydration from not being able to do my TPN for a couple of days. So they decided to admit me. They wanted to watch my heart, give me TPN, and give me IV antibiotics.

So I still sit here in the hospital, hoping to soon get out. I need to get back to work....

Taking it one day at a time!!!

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