December 22, 2013….update

On December 22, 2013 by Michelle Love

BJ was sick last week. He ended up with bronchitis and a sinus infection, which put him at the clinic for 2 days of IV antibiotics. The Augmentin he was on wasn’t doing much for him, but the IV antibiotics finally started him in the right direction. When BJ gets sick, even with something like a sinus infection or bronchitis, it hits him hard, and it takes much longer for him to get well than it does someone with a normal immune system. During those visits to the clinic, the nurses had trouble getting blood return from his port. We were sent over to CMC Radiology for BJ to get a scan of his port, which proved it structurally in tact. Next, they did a dye study, and saw that there was flow out of the port line into his blood stream; however, there was a fibrin sheath that had occluded the opening. We sat at the clinic for another 7 hours, three of which were due to a mix up at the pharmacy, and then 4 hours for BJ to have an infusion of a clot-busting medication. After the 4 hour infusion, they still could not get blood return.

If there weren’t so many chemo infusions left between now and 2016, they could just put an IV in each time. But because the Vincristine is hard on the veins, it needs to go in through the port. The only solution to the occluded port is a port replacement, which means another surgery. They will take his old central line out and replace it with a completely new one. The port runs from the right side of his chest, up and over his collar bone, back down and into his superior vena cava, a major vessel right above his heart. We weren’t at all happy with this news. BJ was very upset, because he remembers how bad he hurt after the first surgery. We are praying it won’t be as bad this second time around.

He’s having the port replaced on Friday, December 27th, and will have his scheduled chemo infusion the same day.

Merry Christmas….