After I hit publish on the last post, the PICC line split.

When I said that it had been a pesky addition this time around, I was in no way joking.

This was the third repair in as many weeks, the first on the night of surgery. It has kinked and slipped and generally not worked.

It split at the connection between the line and the bung and saw us making an emergency trip to the hospital yesterday afternoon.

The nurse fixed it but mentioned that if it were to break again, there would be nothing left to repair.

Our paed had just organised for the antibiotics to continue on until the 21st of August.

My thoughts went something along the lines of this;

there is no way that this PICC line is going to last until then.

Today we had an appointment with the good doctor, so I was hopeful that a port insertion date had been organised.

It had but not until the 27th of August.

I’ll give those of you who have been following Ivy’s PICC line tale a few minutes to do the calculations.

For those who don’t know or who can’t remember, the tale goes something like this;

Ivy was going to have a port - a - cath inserted over a PICC line but because she was too much of an infection risk the surgeons said we had to have a PICC first, with three weeks of IV antibiotics, then the port insertion, followed by more antibiotics.

The last time she had a PICC line in, it was removed too soon and her infection came back, within 48 hours and landed us back in the hospital a week later for another ten days.

As it stands, today, Ivy’s antibiotics will finish a full week before the port insertion which leads one to question the whole point of the last month.

The reason for the PICC and the  extended antibiotics was to protect her from infection, so she would be in the best possible health for the port insertion, now we are leaving her without any coverage for a week before the operation.

It kind of defeats the purpose.

If Ivy gets another infection before the port date then we will be right back to square one.  No surgeon will want to touch her.

Besides that, the line is just not going to make it.

Also;

wouldn’t it be better to co ordinate the port insertion with the next IVIG, so she doen’t have to be canulated again?

The last two attempts at blood draws have failed, veins blown.

Add to that

the fact that we are trying to reduce Ivy’s prednisone and her legs, buttocks and back have blistered up again

and tonight she is running a fever.

It feels as though this is never going to end.