Home Health Nurse Visit

My insurance pays for the cost of a Home Health Nurse to visit with me twice a week while my wife is administering IV Antibiotics to make sure my health does not decline, to change my dressing covering the PICC line,to answer any questions, to monitor my daily weight/temp chart, and to collect blood for analysis once a week.  These visits will continue until August 11, and I am pretty sure that this Nurse will be responsible for removing my PICC line when the treatment is over.

The nurse is supposed to call the day before but this nurse has been calling about an hour before she arrives, letting us know that she is on her way.  I have no problems with the last minute call, but my wife does because she wants to make sure that she has the opportunity and sufficient time to present a clean environment.

I suppose that this is one of the differences between some females and some males and will perhaps never change.

The results from my blood work last week indicate that there has been no damage to any of my internal organs as a result of these antibiotics except a slightly elevated blood/sugar count of 135 and an elimination of my good bacteria which I try to replace daily by eating a container of Yogurt each day.

My body only lost a half pound between yesterday and today so perhaps it is finally adjusting to the antibiotics although I am still fatigued and sleeping in the early evening before my 11 pm treatment and every night there continues to be moderate sweating of my upper body during the night.

My only other concern is that it will be 2 months since I had my last OPDIVO infusion for Melanoma and 1 month since I have taken any daily pills for LYMPHOMA...   The good news is that I had a CT scan performed while in the hospital and it showed no significant growth...

Home Health Nurse Visit

When my Home Health Nurse came to see me yesterday, she drew blood from one of two access points of my PICC line and today the access point from which she drew the blood will not work...  is there a connection here with drawing blood or did that one access point simply crap out?  Pitfalls I suppose of not being in the hospital and having almost immediate access to everything...  as long as you are willing to wait in line.

Now, it appears that someone will need to come out to the house and see if they can get that access point working because there is less risk doing that than inserting a new PICC line at home, especially since I have 21 days remaining on my IV Antibiotic Treatments at home every 8 hours.

On the bright side, I was able to finally shave after being released last Friday which is longer than I usually wait to shave...  usually it is every other day.