My Lumens, Counts, and some stories

I figured out a way you might partly experience the joy of a line set.

Take a piece of skipping rope and tape it to your breast about 4 inches above your nipple, tie on a plastic necklace of beads about three inches down the pipe, measure off six feet exactly then tie the end to a tree. There you go!

Okay our rig is mobile, to a degree as it needs charging at the most inopportune times. Anyway one picture is of my Hickman’s coming out of the chest fat and opening into the three separate tubes that are inside. Note the cloth tape the holds the weight round my neck. Other white cord is my ear phones.
The other picture shows my three lumens red white and blue, in this pic only the white and blue are used. The blue and red alternate every three days as my drug/bleed lumens and the white is always and only used for Cyclosporine as that travels in glucose syrup and can therefore be present in blood tests when they draw blood back up. They check my blood levels for the Cyclosporine to adjust the dose so this would be a problem if all the lines had Cyclosporine in them. Note that the two lumens in use have two and three tails each. And that all the tails and lumens have ‘locks’. Note that on the top of the tails there is a three way valve they use to access the side port. This can be used for emergency drugs or just the daily vampire run. Note that they have a smart bung on the blue lumen 3-way tap and not on the white one. See above. Smart bungs allow no needle access as they are spring loaded little dealies that allow them to wipe the end with alcohol wipe screw on a syringe and then when they unscrew up it seals off again no access to air less contamination. Every direct injection requires ‘flushing’ with saline solution. Some times before and after. And if the line not got something moving down it it needs to have a heparin/saline flush then some more that gets locked under pressure to keep out infection.

I get Magnesium drip, Cyclosporine, ?????aver, Calcium, anti nausea timed injection, anti-nausea as needed, many of these are multiples in a day I reckon we go through over fifty syringes a day. For me alone.

We might as well get the last of the big subjects out of the way now as well. The counts. I asked several question of the Dr. Skier today.

Aside:Dr. April was another great source of info but she rotated out yesterday and Doc Skier is taking time to repair his knee…… ‘nuff said except…. he did it at Big White! Small world. Google it, shinny ;-)

Aside: Have mentioned that I have protected the identities of my carers so that there is no disclaimer issues. Remember that none of us knows nuttin’ about birthing babies.

Doc Skier really finished off my understanding of the counts. We watch 4 counts in particular. They watch hundreds I guess but us patients only watch 4 they are:

Neutiphils (infection fighters) They go to zero. I’m at 0.03 Neutropenic Man! You are 2 to 7.5.

White cells (more infection I guess) they go to zero. I’m at 0.2 You are at 4 to 11.

Platelets (bleeding control) they don’t below 20 or I get transfused. I’m at 59 you are 140 to 400. I use to be between 300 and 600 and as high as 1000 or more sometime after my spleen was removed. It’s a hoot to have actually dropped INTO the normal range.

Hemoglobin (red)(oxygen transfer) doesn’t go to zero. If it goes below X I get transfused. I’m at 107(well above X). You are 110 to 180.

Now for those of you that were doing outside reading, .....and Johnny, You would have noted that “of course you can’t be zero in Hemoglobin (Hb) or platelets, you would be dead.” .......Well bully for you. I was not clear on these two, I had a vague feeling but still…. This was a Doh! moment for me today, to confirm that Dr. Skier was indeed, planning on keeping my Platelets and Hb up! Whew!

I have been preparing a list; a really big list for days now on….wait for it…… My Principles In Life….. (How pretentious is he? Really!) Shut up! It’s my Blog and I can List if I want to!..............Anyway it will be fun, I promise. One story popped in to my memory that I will preview here.

When I was 12/13 we moved from Calgary to Kelowna and I was in grade 7. I was in Jr High in Calgary but back into elementary at Kelowna. Not important I just realized but perhaps one of those bits that make stories more rounded ;-) (shinny, Please discuss in 100 words) Anyway I was early into books and was a regular at the book mobile in Calgary but the new school had an actual Library full of books! Remember that this was a school that had two schools on shift because our real school was not quite complete and my class was pretty rough with some pretty tough kids trying on, being adults, Smokers! Delinquents! Being the new kid I was trying real hard to fit in, being adult without going over to the dark side and trying to not be to badly bullied. So picture the first library day about a week into school in this room filled with books. I lost my head when the teacher asked are there any readers here; are there any books or series of books you want to know about. I stood up and asked if they had the “Freddy The Pig series”.

Book are good!
Technology is good too.

mp3Nurse make the mistake about asking about my Ipod & laptop, did I like Apple stuff? Don’t get me started just go here http://livepage.apple.com/ why would have anything else (cory: dicusss in 100 words, and not a rant)

P.S sorry about the unfortunate tittle last post.
More later
chris