New IV

Tuesday, April 26, 2011
We had to start a new IV for Katelyn this afternoon.  When our nurse came to start Katelyn's afternoon round of antibiotics she found her IV not working properly - she couldn't push the saline, which is apparently a sign that it's time to have a new IV.  So, she had to remove the old IV.  When she had finally removed the last layer of tape, we discovered that Katelyn takes after her momma... she's quite "allergic" to the adhesive on medical tape.  She had fat red lines everywhere the tape had been.  In addition, a couple layers of tape had also apparently been rubbing her skin and left three little cuts.

Then they called the IV team to send a nurse up to start a new one.  The lady was quite good - very quick.  They used a crazy shot of lidocaine to numb her hand first, although from her crying I couldn't tell whether it worked well or not.  Hopefully, since the new IV is on top of her hand, we won't have so many issues with her IV occluding during antibiotic doses...the machine makes an awful beeping noise when it happens and she gets very scared.  We've had doses during which she occluded it every 2-3 minutes because she was bending her elbow even with the IV board!  Then every time it would beep, she would get scared - and the nurse would have to come in to turn it off, which would scare her even more!  I'm so glad that should be resolved now!

But neither removing the first IV nor starting the new one were a fun process for my baby girl, and it's so hard to know how to help her - she's too young to really understand what's happening to her but she's old enough that there's only so much Mommy and Daddy's voices can do to comfort her anymore.

Anyone have any experience with this kind of thing?  We would love any tips!  We've already talked with the hospital staff and she's at a tough in-between age - she's really too young to qualify to have a Child Life Specialist come, but she's obviously old enough to respond not just to the pain of a procedure, but also to the scariness of it.

please, please pray

Please pray that this is the last IV she needs because it's showing signs of complications already!  Please pray that we would have some creative ideas about how to communicate on her level about the things that are happening.

On the up side, she has really enjoyed the little puppy dog sticker on top of her "dog house"... she keeps barking at it!

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