Flying Solo

Well I did it. I accessed Corbin's port by myself. Without a medical professional in my home. Ok so I wasn't completely by myself, I did have my mother-in-law to provide an extra set of hands. I had been nervous about it this morning. I've only attempted to access it a handful of times, been successful three and two of those, well lets just say I barely got it. But today we did it! Set him up in front of his favorite show, currently Yo Gabba Gabba. (Which I can't stand, but if it makes him happy during the hour it takes to do his meds then I'll deal with it!) Got my sterile procedure started, Grandma made sure he didn't touch the sterilized area and we did it!

Here's a picture from Corbin's book "Infusion Time" of an accessed port.

Being able to do meds ourselves has several advantages, one is that we are free to do meds when it works for us secondly, it's really good for Corbin. While it may not be fun for family members to hold or stick him, he knows we love him and he trusts us. I have noticed he doesn't get as upset when we look at his port than when a nurse he doesn't know looks at it.

Photo from Drugs.com

How do I know this? Well, Katie (3) being such a great big sister shared her cold bug with Corbin. Any time his fever is over 101.5 degrees F it means a trip to the ER. I had it 103 degrees yesterday afternoon! See, the port is attached to a catheter in a large vein in his chest. This makes the risk of infection a little higher so we need to check everything out. Even if we feel sure the fever is about the runny nose and cough and not something more serious. We've had family with blood infections so we know how serious those can be.  So off we went to the ER for labs and antibiotics done through the port. As ports are used for many reasons I felt our local ER could handle this. Our nurse was great, but honestly I have never seen Corbin get so upset about having it accessed. I really think it's because he didn't know who was messing with him. Today he didn't but up a fight at all, just some tears and needing to be sure to keep his arms out of the way. Several hours and questions later we were released. Today we are fever and runny nose free!

Over all I still feel the port will be very good for us. We had gotten so use to being independent with Kolbe's meds it's sometimes hard being tied to someone else's schedule again. I realize there will be other things we learn as we go along and there will be other challenges. But for today I'm feeling pretty good!