So have you ever seen the movie Ground Hog Day? The movie where Bill Murray is a weatherman and ends up living the same day over and over and over again? Well I used to love that movie, but as my friend Tanya pointed out, it feels like we are living that movie right now, because every day feels exactly the same as the next… over and over again.
Every day I’m at the hospital – every day I do the same thing and it gets a little monotonous. Thankfully the days go by fast, but I’m really missing my family this week. The nights are long without them and I miss having the kids come to the hospital to hang out with me and visit with Ava. And it doesn’t help, but lately I’ve been thinking about what my life would look like right now if I wasn’t here… and I just know that our family would be having so much fun with a healthy 7 month old Ava at home this summer… oh dear, I better come back to my reality.
So yesterday was good and we were all pumped about having Ava’s double lumen picc, and they started her on a lasix infusion.. meaning that she is getting her diuretic now 24 hrs a day, which should really help with her fluid balance. It also means that her heart meds never need to be stopped and that’s another great thing.
And everything was going well yesterday until around 10:30 am when I went to go pick up Ava and something tugged. She started crying and I put her down to see if any wires had pulled, and I was horrified to see her new double lumen picc looking like it had been partially pulled out of her arm. I think I almost went into shock and the nurse came running and I felt sick to my stomach because I knew what Ava would have to go through to get it put in again and I just felt terrible.
Thankfully as it turned out, it didn’t actually pull out at all, just the securement device had pulled off her skin and the excess line had uncoiled to make it look like it had come out. It was certainly a huge relief that it was still in place, but I still felt keyed up, and I was very very careful about picking Ava up the rest of the day.
And thankfully it does seem like the lasix infusion and everything is helping her, because this morning Ava woke up really happy! She was awake before I got to the hospital, so the nurses gave her a bath, got her dressed and took her for a walk before I even got there, but they said that she was so smiley and she hasn’t been that way ina while and I was very happy to hear it.
And we also got a positive blood culture today – hurrah! Meaning that after weeks of fevers,and doing blood-work looking for some culprit, they finally found some infection in Ava’s picc line! But since this is a new picc line, the dr said that there could have been a pocket of infection near the site of the old line, and then when the lines were switched the pocket was penetrated. But it’s just great to have Ava on the antibiotics for a reason and hopefully after a full course of them her fevers should finally be a thing of the past.
But unfortunately today we had a not-so-nice repeat of yesterday… as Aleeda – our little friend from across the hall – had her picc line pulled out for real this afternoon… UGGGG!!! As you can imagine, it was chaotic again as they had to x-ray her to see where the line was, and then she had to get an IV put in and the IGT nurse that comes to check on Ava and Aleeda’s line got a little upset that it happened two days in a row, this time for real. And it was just one more thing in a day when the whole floor seemed to be going crazy today – I seriously ended up with a headache just from the super-charged atmosphere in our ward today. Isn’t that crazy?
But tomorrow I am thankfully escaping my Groundhog Dayish life and I am going home to help Jason pack up the kids and bring them back here and I am GLAD! I will miss Ava, but it will feel good to at least get a tiny break from this life. As they say, a change is as good as a rest!!
