The Daily Infusion

Seems I'm getting into some sort of once a week blogging groove to mark how many weeks I'm on treatment. So, for those of us counting, it's nine weeks on Tuesday.

Since my home nurse comes every Monday, that serves as a reminder that I've made it through another week of treatment. Interestingly I had a different home care nurse today (Monica is on vacation), and she had quite a bit of experience with Lyme disease patients. During only seven months working as a home care nurse in New York she had SIX chronic Lyme patients on her caseload. Most of them were on Rocephin along with a combination of other medications. This means that all six of them were too sick to go to an infusion center for their port maintenance, just as I am. It's maddening to me that the IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America) still fails to recognize Chronic Lyme as 'real'.

I started this post a while back in an effort to continue explaining how the port and antibiotic therapy works.

First, we get everything ready: Saline, the antibiotic (Rocephin) and Heparin. Mom and I have our division of labor worked out quite well!

I get an infusion every day around 11 AM.

Here's mom making sure there are no bubbles in the saline syringe.

In the earlier post I showed how the port is accessed at all times. This means that I have a little 'pigtail' hanging from the site with a catheter on it. So the syringes just screw on to the blue piece in the photo above and with a push what is in them goes directly into my system.

The order of administration is SASH: a Saline flush, then the Antibiotic (over a five minute period), another Saline flush, and then a dose of Heparin to help keep the line clear.

Asher, always the helper, supervises everything. We were afraid he would be anxious about the appearance of so much medical 'stuff' like he was in 2005, but so far he's been attentive without being overly anxious.

At the end we have a lot of waste! Ugh.

Hope this helps a little in picturing the medical side of things.

Blessings,

Emily

Photos: The saline, antibiotic, and heparin ready for my infusion; Mom getting the bubbles out of the saline flush (this is usually my job--bubble monitor!); Asher supervising; a mess of medical stuff.