Broc's Journey: Unexpected ER Trip

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Unexpected ER Trip

Brocoli and I took a trip to the ER on Friday afternoon. We went to LaPorte Hospital for labs as usual and Dawn wasn't able to draw from either of his lumens(the 2 lines in his PICC). His lines had started to become difficult we just kept pushing harder. He did have the purple lumen TPA (medication to dissolve any fibers that start to grow in the lumen) in the PICU at Mott Childrens Hospital a week ago.

We need to have both his lumens working ASAP as he is having an IV therapy treatment on Wed and still needs to have lab draws to check his eos levels. They have not gone back to normal yet but at least as staying lower than 10%.

I got a hold of Brocs Immuno before hand to let him know we were coming to the ER.We checked in and they very kindly put us in a small waiting room away from all the other ill people. Seen as Broc really isn't ill and very immune compromised and also 2 weeks out of surgery.

We only waited a couple minutes and then they took us back to take his vitals. Something I was not expecting was that Broc had a fever. 100.1F may not seem high to many but for Broc its a fever that needs at least a little investigating.

Once they saw that he had a fever and a little cold we were put in isolation and poor buddy was tested for the flu and a whole battery of tests were run on him. Its protocol when you have a PICC line and a fever you have to be tested for a line infection.

Thankfully all the tests came back negative which I suspected anyway. Buddy did not like that fact that they had to stick him as his PICC line wasn't working but he was a champ and they were very proud of him.

The thing that kept us there the longest was waiting for the PICC Team to come infuse the TPA into Brocs lines. Once that is done we have to wait 45 min to see if it works. If they can draw blood from them then it worked. Thankfully it worked. We were out of there by 8:30pm.

We were very thankful to have a very knowledgeable Dr and willing to speak with Brocs Immuno over the phone. He was very interested in Brocs history and took everything I said seriously. Unfortunately with Broc he is so complicated that who ever takes care of him has to be very thorough.

Thank you to all our friends who supported us via the internet and texting Friday night. It felt like I had 100 of you all from all over the world right in the room with us.