To TPA, or Not

It’s the day after Thanksgiving and all through the house, everyone was stuffed, even the mouse.

We had a very nice Thanksgiving with our close, personal friends, Karen and Randy. It was just the four of us and we ate like kings. It doesn’t take as much food as it used to to eat like a king.

All day long I had been struggling with my Milrinone Pump. The alarm kept sounding alerting that the line had an occlusion…a blockage.

I tried priming the line several times but it never lasted long before the alarm went off again.

I struggled with it all through dinner and then seemed to have it working while we played some games.

Then we got in the car to go home and almost immediately, the alarm went off.

When we got home, the first thing I did was change the pump. That worked for about 5 minutes. Then we decided to change out the whole system, the bag, the tubing and the pump.

That worked for about 7 minutes.

At that point, I called in to the Infusion office and reported the problem.

I got a return call from Nurse Haley shortly after that. She advised us the change lines and then call her back. I did that and the beeping stopped. It’s been quiet all night.

Now they have to send out somebody to assess the line. I got a call this morning from one of the nurses who is on the way. I didn’t catch her name but I’ll find out when she gets here by her name tag.

She said it sounds like I’m going to need the TPA procedure. You can check out my post from August 22nd to get more info about that. The thing of it is I’m going to have to go to an ER to get the TPA.

But first we will wait and see if the nurse can get it unblocked here at the house.

10:45AM: The nurse was successful. I did not get her name because her name tag was facing the wrong way. 

It took a while but after flushing the line very slowly, she was able to clear it and get blood to flow back out.

She switched back to the other line, meant for the milrinone, and flushed the extra line as well. 

So, all is well and I don’t have to go to the ER for TPA.