Ugh

Putting the PICC line in was horrible. It took three of us to hold his hand down to put in his IV that would deliver the Kettamine (his sedation). He’s on Ryan’s lap, crying and reaching for me. Not an easy thing to do. However, they got the IV in pretty quickly and he calmed down as soon as the drugs hit him.

I put him on the gurney and they immediately hooked him up to monitors and gave him a couple minutes to go under. The Kettamine didn’t put him fully under just enough to not feel pain or know what’s going on. You don’t want to give kids too much so they closely monitored the amount he was given. Well our little guy is a fighter and wouldn’t go quickly. They had to give him quite a bit. Everyone kept saying how stubborn he was being, ha!

Finally he was out, and they put up a small drape to put in his PICC line. It took them quite awhile, over an hour when it usually only takes 20 minutes. They couldn’t get the tiny catheter around his shoulder. With a PICC line, the patient has a tiny, plastic tube that goes into a main artery. This way we can’t blow out a vein over the heavy drugs and they can also draw blood from it without having to stick him again. A painful process to start out with but worth it in the end. When it was finally over, they left him on the gurney waiting for him to wake up. It took over an hour so they finally let us go back up to our room. He continued to sleep for over an hour and a half.

Here is a picture of our home for the next two weeks. I’m standing by the door, taking the pictures so it’s not very big. We set up a play mat and table and chairs next to the wall, across from his bed.

His PICC line is in his right arm and runs up the back of it, out of his PJ’s. We hope he can’t get to it at this angle. When I took this picture, he wasn’t hooked up yet. He now has three lines running from it that act like a leash :(

I can tell it’s going to be a hard stay. Ben has a lot of energy and being hooked up to an IV pole doesn’t help. He can’t just run off. Somebody has to be with him at all times. Ryan and I are extremely exhausted after just one day.

Thank you to all you have contacted us. If you’d like to visit us or send us some mail, please let me know. I’ll figure out our address tomorrow and post it up.