Updated: Mary Jo Update #5 - Painful body Jewelry

We went to the Vanderbilt University Hospital this morning to have Mary Jo's Hickman catheter installed for the transplant. We had to check in at 7am. The surgery to install the catheter was scheduled for 9:30am. The procedure only took about 30 minutes, but we were at the hospital over six hours.

Mary Jo wasn't real happy. Vanderbilt being a teaching hospital, a resident actually performed the surgery under the direction of a general surgeon. She only had local anesthesia. So, she could hear the surgeon giving instructions to the resident when he wasn't doing something correctly. I guess that the doctors in training have to learn how to do surgery on a real live person sometime. You just wished they were doing it on someone else.

Just as they were getting ready to discharge Mary Jo from the recovery room. They rolled in an elderly lady from the operating room who had fallen in an assisted living facility and broken her back. I felt sorry for the poor lady. She seemed to be in great pain and was having trouble breathing. Mary Jo's recovery room nurse had to go help another nurse with that lady. The operating room there is a busy place.  I guess they all are. As we were leaving three ambulances pulled up with more people at the emergency room door.

The area around the base of Mary Jo's neck on the right side where the catheter was installed is pretty sore. The Catheter is actually tunneled under the skin from a major artery going to the heart. The procedure to install it is much more invasive than the power port that she has in the same area on the left side. The power port is a non-tunneled catheter fixed in place at the  point of insertion.

When, I told Mary Jo that the lumens of the catheter looked like body jewelry. She said that if Rick Pitino could get a tatoo with a Cardinal after UofL won the NCAA Basketball Championship, she could get her body pierced with this fancy jewelry dangling from her to celebrate the Championship. I think she just uppped the ante for Rick.


Tomorrow we will go to the stem cell center to have the dressing changed on the catheter. Then, she will begin the Neupogen shots to mobilize the stem cells in her bone marrow on Sunday. The first session to collect stem cells is on Wednesday.


The weather here was much better today, cooler but sunny. So, far it has been quieter tonight. I have only heard sirens and trains a couple of times. The dog must be tired from last night. I haven't heard much barking at all.