January 15, 2000

I was sent home with my PICC line so I could get TPN to replace all the vitamins and calories that I needed to heal. At home I had a home healthcare nurse come to see me everyday. Every night at 8pm we would hook up the TPN to my iv PICC line and had to let it infuse for 12 hours. I hated this because it made me get up about 3 times in the middle of the night to go pee!!! I was still very weak, and the bag of TPN that was 3000 was pretty dang heavy for me! My mom would place it on a chair that had wheels so I could just push it around the house when I needed to get something. Then my worst fear came true- Having trouble with my ileostomy bags. It was painful enough to change them because my skin was still so tender in that area. One night my bag began leaking so we changed it. About 1 hour later it was leaking AGAIN. We just figured things like that happen and we put another bag on...Pretty soon that bag started leaking too. We called my home healthcare nurse. It was almost 2am, and she said she would come out to the house. She arrived and we put yet another bag on me. The next morning I called to my surgeons office and talked to his nurse. She told us to come to the office and she would put another bag on me. We got to the office, and upon removing my bag, there was alot of broken down skin. It was very painful. During the next 3 weeks I would go back to the ER about 5 times cause I would get dehydrated. My surgeon had put me back on oxcontin for pain, until the next day I found a whole oxycontin pill in my ileostomy bag that wasn't dissolved! Then I found 2 more pills in my bag the same way.

Please..don't stop reading now...