Stuck in the Slammer

Molly is on Day 17 of Round 1. 

Molly's nurse has the quote of the day - "Stuck in the Slammer!" Nurse Tracie also took care of Xander when he was in 10 years ago. She is super awesome - loves coffee, hates boba tea, and loves to joke around! Molly has really enjoyed her laughter today, after a day of crappiness yesterday.

The ports that Molly had installed on 11/1 have been nothing but a pain at all levels. Her fever was due to an infection around the port and the location of the ports (directly in the middle of her chest!) is in a horrible spot. Yesterday one of the nurses missed accessing it completely, it was hurting, started to bleed and overall took an hour to deal with (should have been 10 minutes). It has been one thing after another with these ports. Hopefully she is through the worst of it now! I will spare sharing all of the port site pictures, but let's just say it has been angry and is now better.

Molly has been without fever since 11/14 and is now off of IV Cefepime. The Attending Doctor rounding today ended up telling the Resident and Fellow that keeping her on Cefepime now was a matter of academics and was basically unnecessary, so I spoke up and was like - then lets get her off of it! She will need to be on this so many more times, the less the better. They agreed and she can now get disconnected from the IV pole all afternoon.

She is still on Vancomycin. She had the same issue that Xander did with the Vanco, it is called "red man syndrome" where one can have a reaction to this med right away - head/body turns red and itchy. They were able to slow the infusion down and she is tolerating it now without Benadryl.

Molly's hair has really started to fall out now - she was wanting to change the color one more time and so Aaron made it happen! She went for what she calls the "blue mullet-mohawk" look! 

 

She has a great appetite and is taking all of her meds without any issues. She puts Miracle Aloe lotion/Vitamin E oil on her skin every night. Besides the port site, her biggest complaint is that she has no one to talk to and is feeling isolated. The past couple of days she has not been able to leave the floor because she has been hooked up so much, but can walk around the floor with the pole. So she did 11 laps the one night (over 1/2 mile) and 7 laps last night. She waves to the other patients through the window if they can look. When she does get disconnected we have been able to go on longer walks outside, down to South University for the occasional boba tea or Starbucks. 

For those of you reading this that know Molly personally, please have your kids contact her - just to say hi. It doesn't have to be a long chat, or much of anything - just knowing that you all are there for her, will go a long way.

It is looking like 20 more days or so "in the slammer" before she can go home for a short time.

Peace and Love,

Emilie