The PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line is no more! After having one for 5 1/2 months, can’t say that any of us will miss it. The picture doesn’t quite do it justice for showing just how long it was, but you can see the bandage on Kendall’s right arm that showed where the lumens came out. Then that line snaked through his vein up toward his heart. Typically they remove the PICC line when a central line is placed, but Kendall was receiving so many medications and treatments that they have left it in for several weeks after he got his central line. He should have that three-lumen central line in for at least the first 100 days post-transplant.
The doctors warned us, and they were right. Days +7 through +10 (today) have been brutal. Kendall is losing large amounts of hair again, and his numbers have stayed at rock bottom, even after getting several platelet transfusions and Neupogen shots to increase white blood cell counts. The hope is that sometime this week his numbers will start to climb, which will indicate that engraftment is happening. Then we wait and see how his body responds to (or rejects) the new system.
Starting tomorrow the visiting hours for the transplant ward will be changing to 9:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. The total number of hours I can visit during a day won’t change, but it will be nice to have a little more flexibility with when I go up there. Assuming I can find where he is at the moment, that is. Kendall is now on his THIRD hospital room since being admitted 16 days ago. That makes getting through security interesting when they ask whom I am visiting and what room he is in (“Well, he was first admitted to 4550, but then had to be moved to 4545 when after your power outage the heat in his room stopped working, and then this morning had to be moved yet again to room 4542 because the toilet in his room was broken….”). Their patient lists never seem to be up-to-date with where Kendall is, and the last two times I’ve been there he didn’t even show up on their list at all and they had to call up to confirm he was actually a patient. (I assure you, he is.) Hopefully this will be the last time I need to hang up all of Kendall’s pictures, as I am running out of tape!