Owen's Story

Today was a hospital day and we got some bad news.  I should have kept my mouth shut on the way to the hospital.  I was telling my mother-in-law about how I haven’t been posting everyday lately since he has been doing so good and I feel like we do the same thing everyday.  We got in the room and the nurse was getting ready to access his port and was cleaning it and thought it looked different.  I said that Jeff and I wanted them to look at it because last time we were there we thought it looked bruised, and recently we were thinking that it looked like it was sticking out further than it did before.  She had a couple other nurses come look at it, then the Fellow that has Owen as her patient looked at it and they all thought the same thing.  They are thinking that it looks like it is pushing its way out.  Apparently, they sometimes do work their way out and some actually break through the skin.  Another Oncologist came to see it too and this is the decision that they came to…

Take it out.  What does that mean for us… Well, they put him on antibiotics because they think there might be a little infection around the port itself.  He isn’t showing any signs of infection, such as fever, but it looks irritated.  We go back on Friday, after being on the antibiotics for a few days so they can look at it again.  His Doctor should be back (he had the flu today and was off) and they will make a decision on Friday whether or not he will be in surgery on Monday.  They said they are pretty sure they are going to need to take it out.  We still don’t know exactly what they would do after they take it out.  They said the Internal Radiologist has to look at it and assess if they think they could reinsert a new one… put one on the other side or if they are just going to do a pic line.  We are really hoping that they don’t have to do the pic line because this would mean he couldn’t get it wet… and knowing how much he loves his little blow up pool and baths, I think this is going to be really hard.  Especially in the summer.  I guess we will wait and hear what the options are on Friday.

It is just so frustrating because we are finally getting to a point that we were thinking things were going to get easier, and now a set back.  They also didn’t give him his Chemo today because they didn’t want to risk his counts dropping being that he will be going in for surgery.  They want him to be as strong as possible.  His Doctor will have to make the decision if he makes this day up or if he just proceeds with the next two doses.

Anyway I will keep you updated… this is from the other day when he was running through the sprinkler.