Thursday, October 11, 2012

Hospital Sweat Shop


As one can imagine, Tom is rather hardwired.  I choose to refer to it as being, "fully accessorized".  He has his picc line coming out of his left arm and a port that has been implanted into his chest on the right side.  For those who know Tom, he doesn't really find the hospital gowns to be of "high fashion" and even more so, not so comfortable. 

Upon readmittance this time around, Tom was wearing a zip up sweatshirt and he realized he could have his port accessed without having to wear a gown and run the tubing in odd ways out of a sleeve.  The hangup was that the sweater then didn't allow access to the picc line as the sweater was long sleeved. Tom's frustration of t-shirts allowing for picc line access, but not port access and the sweater allowing the opposite, led to a stroke of genius.

Tom realized he needed to have a t-shirt (for comfort and day to day wear) that had a possible opening wear the port is located for access of tube lines and dressing changes. This led to us buying some t-shirts from Michael's and some sewing materials.  We both had differing ideas of what this shirt should look like.  Tom's idea involved cutting out a hole and then utilizing velcro and a patch to cover the hole, but allow access when needed.  My idea involved cutting an area, but creating it more into a flap and utilizing a button. 

My prototype is done, however due to Tom not feeling too well, he has ended up asking me to finish his and then we plan to have him model for the nurses and take a vote.  So watchout everyone! We may have a hot new product to hit the fashion/cancer treatment world!

On the serious note: Tom is feeling "drained and a bit sickly" though he's up and around. He's still feeling a bit anxious from Monday's poor news.  The oncologist said that on the poor news note, the odds are still in his favor.  Tom says that luckily all of the nurses find him amusing and chat with him frequently.  He's made a couple of friends with either patients or family members of patients.  He's done a good job at being up and a round this time rather than in bed watching TV.  He had a nasty back spasm today, but seems to have recovered after getting some drugs.

On the chemo note, he only has one dose of cytarabine tonight at 6pm and then he will only be given Leukovorin which isn't a chemo drug, it's used to lower the methotrexate levels from the methotrexate chemo he had earlier in the week.  Once his methotrexate levels are at or below 0.02 he will be allowed to go home.  Hooray!







No comments:

Post a Comment