Got to disengage the giant capsule today, yay! Wow, that goes a long way towards feeling normal again. That chemo pump has a terrible weight to it, which has nothing to do with the physicality of it. Okay, this chronicle is mostly pictorial. I’ll caption what’s going on.
Okay. Once the pump is empty, first step is to switch the line to ‘off’ – you just slide the tube from the open flow notch to the pinch end. Easy peasy.
Next, get your bag of goodies out and ready. You’ll have alcohol wipes, gloves, two loaded syringes for flushing, and a bandage.
Even if you don’t think you need to do this, go over your instructions once before you begin, because you really don’t need to fuck something up, and end up with an unnecessary trip back to hospital, yeah? After a few times, it will become old hat.
The gloves, they won’t fit, guaranteed. Pain in the ass. You’re instructed to clean the port connector for 15 seconds, for each syringe, so count: one, one thousand…
Free! Woohoo.
Now that you’re happily unencumbered again, gather up all the stuff.
Put all the stuff in the transport bag, and stick it somewhere you won’t forget, because you have to take it back with you for the next infusion, where it’s happily catalogued as properly destroyed and all that.
Now for more tea and something to eat so I can take my dexamethasone. Oh man, it is so nice to have that thing off me. Your port area and shoulder will be a bit sore, treat that part of yourself gently.
I can only imagine what a relief it must be to have the port gone.
I was quite surprised myself, just how much you swing towards ‘okay, normal’ again.
Yay for having the load of. Let the next one feel lighter.
OK, for me, personally? I would be glad to be able to take that thing off on my own, and be able to do the little tasks one must do afterwards. That’s because if I can, I prefer to do stuff myself. I know not everyone is the same.
Well done on getting through the first treatment! May this go swiftly and well. And may that tumor die die die.
Thanks, Charly.
Kestrel:
Oh me too! I’d feel damn silly driving for an hour to have someone else do something which takes about 2 minutes. It’s not at all scary or complex. Probably the most annoying bit is how high up the port is -- you have to resort to looking in the mirror to get the top bandage off, but that’s minor enough.
Yay for being unburdened again. I hope the port calms down again nicely and you can recover before the next treatment.
Sounds like you’re running a marathon with hurdles.
I’m happy you’re feeling better, Caine.
Glad your first infusion is done. Recuperate the best you can before your next infusion.
Been watching this from the eye of somebody who was on the research/manufacturing end of some anti-cancer drugs for a large chunk of my career. Lots of training in handling potent compounds, which most anti-cancer drugs fall into. Recognized the purple nitrile gloves immediately. Definitely you need a small size. The “one size fits all” (medium) is all marketing.
I require a large size to fit properly, and have the remainder of carton of boxes (1000 gloves total) downstairs. I kept two sizes available when the Redhead was bedridden, one for me and one for her CNA’s. Now I use them for “dirty jobs”. The next one is emptying the vacuum cleaner and replacing the filter, hopefully tomorrow if not windy outside. The color isn’t as important as the size. Nitrile vs. latex is only an issue if you are allergic to latex. They can be had on-line from various medical or hardware (for painting/gardening) sites, although small latex gloves might be available from larger drug store.
Yay for freedom and for doing it yourself. I hope the port area settles down quickly.
People have already said the substance of what I’ve been thinking (plus a bit more), so I’ll just join in the yays and wish you a good rest and recuperation.
I did some image gooogling …
it seems to me that They™ have better carrying-around-chemo-infuser-thingy
for dogs than for humans
First pic of Ludmilla looks like she is biting the tube.
Nice.
@chigau #11: Hey, that’s a really good point. Vets have good stuff.
I have a drip set up to keep my carving and so on cool as I carve/polish/grind it. I use a horse IV bag. I got it from the vet; it comes with a clamp that adjusts the rate of drip or shuts it off, and it also is easy to fill as it has a sort of zip-lock top on it. Best part? It only cost me about $5.00. The vet told me they use some of the exact same equipment for animals as they do for humans, except instead of charging someone a bazillion dollars for a bag of saline, it costs far less.
I was thinking about aquarium pumps, too. They make some amazingly tiny ones; I’ve got one that’s about two and a half cm in diameter and about 5 cm tall. My thought though is that medical people don’t often talk to people in the fish hobby. Or vets, either.
I am happy to hear that the first treatment is done, and you attended it in high style. Cancer sucks and is one of those things where the average person can’t offer much help beyond hand holding. Gentle hugs and perhaps some useful information on pet friendly rentals local to Bismarck. This is the current blurb on their FB page.
Thanks, Tethys! I’ll check them out.
And thank you all so much!
Chigau & Kestrel, not the least bit surprised that the gadgets for animals are much more user friendly and cheaper. It’s not that the design can’t be improved on these things, they can be. There just isn’t much motivation for anyone to do so.
Oh, and that’s not Ludmilla, but my desk skull, and yes, it was biting the tubing, because it’s the only way I could get the capsule to stay in one place. :D
About 20 years ago my grandparents’ generation started trading “horse ointment” amongst each other. Some stuff rich in essential oils made for horses that also worked wonders on their old joints. By now you can buy it in every drug store and it still goes under the name “horse ointment”
@Giliell: There’s a product on some store shelves in the US called “bag balm” that started life an ointment for dairy cow udders and worked well enough that it moved into an ointment for any cracked or chafed skin, and also a hair care line one sees from time to time called “mane and tail” that still has the profile of a luxuriously coifed horse on its bottle yet is sold in the people products aisle rather than pet products-- except for when it’s sold at feed stores.
The bag balm thing has also happened in Finland with a local brand of udder cream/ointment (Tummeli), which isn’t of course all that surprising, udders and hands are the same everywhere.
Ice Swimmer
Oh, bag balm has been around for ages, but it also had always been used on the hands of those doing the milking.