Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Pump Refill

It was Pump Refill Day for Miles. I drove him 5 hours round trip. He had a hour and a half appointment. It went really well. I thought you might enjoy the details of it all. The Nurse Practitioner was pleased that I wanted to take photos. She said no one has ever asked to that before. I think they had fun.


An hour before the appointment I had to pull over and put some cream on Miles so during the medicine change he wouldn't feel pain. Of course he was asleep, but as you'll be able to tell in other photos...he still got his nap on. I will say that Miles and I did not share a Tequila Sunrise before our road trip. The kid was just tired all day. He slept all day!


OK, here's the belly. Now I've gotta find the pump.

This is what the pump looks like in his body.

Here's the template that I have to use to try to figure out where in the world the pump is in his stomach. There's a little whole in the middle where I've got to line it up so the needle can go in there.

The medicine to deaden the skin.

I put the cream where I THINK the needle will be in later! Ahhh!

Next I placed a plastic covering over the medicine to keep it in place.

I took the paper covering off.

This is me being unsure if I got the cream in the right place.

You can tell Miles took that well. He's such a trooper. Back on the road.

Pretty wildflowers. There were so many beautiful flowers to look at today!

This ant hill looked so cool to me. It was huge!

When Miles used to get Botox all the time the Dr would use this machine to help him know where the right muscles were to inject. The Dr would listen to the sound waves and know where to inject the medicine.

This is the room we always go to when he has Botox or a Pump Refill.

This is all the stuff it takes to change out the medicine.

Prepping the area.

The nurse put the needle inside the port so she could extract the old medicine. She got it on the first try and Miles didn't even flinch.

The old medicine is being taken out.

Now the new medicine is being put in the pump.

All done with that.

Now the Nurse Practitioner is turning up the pump with this hand held computer.

Um, yuck. Here's some advice. If you see a sucker on the carpeted floor of a Children's Hospital...just walk away!

This a cool thing in the waiting room. I'm not sure what to call it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

wow that was amazing. Thanks for taking the pics. Hey that big thing in the waiting room looks like a BIG puzzle of sorts.

Delilah's Daddy said...

I'm 20 and I suffer from chronic pain from spinal cysts, which is amplified by a pontine (brain-stem) glioma, which I've had since childhood. I'm not having any luck with oral and transdermal medications. I've been considering an intrathecal pump for a while, but until I found your blog, I haven't been able to find pictures of what the pump looks like once installed (the one in my neurosurgeon's office was a bit bigger than expected) and I was having trouble understanding exactly where the pump goes. My pint is, thanks for shedding some light. I wish more people would share their (and their family's) experiences.