If You Give KK A Catheter...

...it will probably clog.

We spent another long day in Boston on Tuesday.

We arrived at the Jimmy Fund Clinic at 10:45am. KK's vitals were taken then the nurses tried to draw blood through the PowerPort. It didn't work. In fact, it has only worked well one time. After the last failed attempt to draw blood through the PowerPort, the nurse practitioner ordered a line study at Children's Hospital for 1:15pm on Tuesday. The hope was that the line study would reveal they could do the infusion through the PowerPort even though they aren't able to draw blood.

Unfortunately, they had to do labs before the line study and infusion. I asked them to insert an IV to do the blood draw...that way KK would only need to be stuck once in case the line study revealed that they couldn't use the PowerPort for the infusion later. After several attempts, they were able to get enough blood for the labs, but they were not able to place an IV successfully.

At this point, it was 1pm and we had to hurry over to Children's. The line study revealed that the catheter was clogged and they would not be able to do blood draws or infusions with it. So we headed back to the Jimmy Fund Clinic to give them the bad news. KK cried (and I think the nurses wanted to cry as well) as they continued to have trouble placing an IV. They were finally able to place the IV just before 4pm. We then waited for the pharmacy to send up the Avastin bolus. Thankfully, this week's infusion was done over 60 minutes rather than 90, so KK was done just after 5:30pm.

I asked KK if she wanted to get the PowerPort fixed (another surgery) or just have blood draws and infusions through an IV. After the difficulty placing an IV, it is no surprise that she wants to try to fix the PowerPort. She is scheduled for surgery #11 to remove and replace the PowerPort catheter on Friday, September 4.