My afternoon scare

I had just gotten back with Logan from our field trip today and after settling both boys down, lay down on the couch to relax for a few and catch up with my Dad on how the day went.

Soon, from the living room around the corner, we heard Callum call my name. Mom, can you come here?

I walked into the living room and there stood Callum, smiling very proudly at me.

Look Mom! I took it off all by myself!

He was showing me the dressing for his port, which was half removed and dangling from his chest.

The needle still looked in tact and in his chest, and he didn't seem to be in any pain. However, the whole point of keeping the dressing on is to protect the port from any potential dirt or infection, while a needle is in and the port is "accessed".

So yeah. Seeing that, I jumped into a bit of a panic.

Oh my God what have you done!

And immediately moved him to the table, set him down in a chair, put a mask on him and tried my best to cover the dressing, tubing, and all, with some press and seal as a cover.

Meanwhile, I grabbed the phone to immediately call the clinic. And by then, Callum had broken into hysterics, so my Dad was trying to calm him down while I tried listening to the menu tree to know which number would get me to the on call nurse the fastest. Ugh.

I left a voice mail explaining what had happened and then sat with a sobbing Callum in my lap, for the call back with further instruction. He still wasn't in any pain, but he knew the press and seal meant a visit to the doctors would follow - so between that and my panic "oh fuck" mode - I think I had scared him a bit. Luckily, he seemed to calm down and even almost drift into a nap on my lap, while we waited.

The nurse called us back pretty quick - and once we discussed why his port was accessed at home (he had chemo on Monday and we decided to leave it accessed since we had lab draws to do tomorrow), she said to me, ok Mom, I'm going to walk you through removing the needle.

I was afraid of that.

It really wasn't so bad, just the whole ordeal in general was unsettling. Thankfully my Dad was there to hold Callum (down) while I got us all masks, scrubbed my hands and donned some gloves. Then with a little instruction (and remembering what I'd seen nurses do before), I pulled the bigass needle out of my kid's chest.

Callum was crying the entire time - but mostly again just scared than anything. And I think he still thought we'd have to go to the hospital. So when he realized I pulled the needle out and that meant we didn't have to go anywhere, he was back to his usual self again pretty quickly.

Here's an after shot I quickly took of our mess on the table when it was all done. You can see the wad of adhesive (dressing) under the needle sticking up in the middle. Luckily we have a sharps container, so after a little show and tell to the boys so they could see it up close and personal, we dropped the needle in our container, slapped a bandaid on Callum's chest, and resumed our task for the evening (very important -making Popsicles). :)

Phew!