IV league

Outpatients on Wednesday. it was quite packed in the waiting room because the docs were away at a CF conference in France (Brest?) last week. I think I saw Gazza from the forum, I was going to say hello, but before I did he was whisked away into a side room. I never know what the etiquette is with other PWCF anyway; whether it is OK to chat with all the cross infection concerns these days. Anyway I was ushered in by a new CF specialist nurse (she's hot, but I didn't say that ;-)) FEV1 was relatively unchanged at 2.85 and FEVC was down a bit at 3.5, I had decided beforehand to go on home IVs barring some kind of miraculous turnaround in blows.

The doctor was new as well, is it just me or are the doctors getting younger and younger? I have to admit the first thing that runs through my head when I see a new doctor is "Oh god, can he/she fit a cannula?" I don't like being the guinea pig to some inept youth learning how to find a vein (Andy Jones was particularly bad for the first year I remember ;-)) I always get my IVs fitted on the big vein that runs at the back of my arms, I can do left or right, but obviously the left is more practical because I'm right handed. Other than that it was just a normal IV visit; cannula went in OK, after an initial scare when it stopped bleeding back. Standard procedure (for me) is to give me the first dose of Ceftazadine and Tobramycin, to check if there are any allergic reactions and then go round the back of the pharmacy to pick up the boxes of IVs. At that point I was going to ask the CF specialist nurse about Laura but then I decided against it; it would probably put her in an awkward position as she wouldn't be allowed to say anything due to patient confidentiality, and then I started to question why I wanted to know more in the first place. Anyway, before I knew it I was driving back with plastic bags and boxes of bottles, bungs, needles and syringes. I've put it all by the side of my bed. The Tobramycin dose has changed from 4ml twice a day to 7.5 ml once a day. I'm taking some kind of immodium variant as well because IVs seem to give me the runs these days.

I then discovered that I'd run out of needles for the Tobramycin finger-prick-test so I foolishly decided to do it with a normal green IV needle. I attempted it four times but the blood was not forthcoming so I had to ask the long-suffering R to do it for me. She didn't hold back, in fact it was a bit of a painful gusher, Ouch! No masochist, me ;-)