Tube Wars (part deux)

Day 73 of 1,278

Just a quick update on our visit to the clinic today. We were expecting to spend most of the day there receiving chemo. Instead, we ended up spending most of the day pulling our hair out just trying to draw blood from Carson's "tubie".

It seems like a simple process. Insert tubie into Carson's port; check blood cont; receive chemo; go home. Normally accessing the port only takes a few minutes and goes smoothly. "Normally" being the operative word. Accessing the port did take just a few minutes. Getting blood return, however, took several hours. Ugh!

When we've tried to administer chemo at home we've always had problems. Well, not exactly always. Of the four times we've done at-home treatment, tubie cooperated with us on one occasion. One.

Oh well. Today's incident is just one of those things. The really great thing is that we are in a super clinic surrounded by totally awesome nurses and doctors. It's like our second home and passing the time there is actually very easy. Scary easy.

Ah....15 seconds of silence.

Carson was still a great trooper today. He played and talked non-stop. Non-stop...especially on the talking part. And when he learned there was pizza and mini corn dogs available, he went on an eating rampage. Something clicked and next thing we know he is on an eating rampage. Chow down, buddy!

Pizza and corn dogs. Does life get any better than this??

Anyway...we finally got blood from Carson's tubie. His ANC was up to 410...which is a considerable improvement from Friday's 80. HOWEVER, it's still not high enough to restart chemo. So...after four and a half hours at the clinic, we came home. We go back on Thursday to check blood again...it's looking like he may need a blood transfusion.

Pray tubie cooperates on Thursday!

Paul.