The Outpatient Story

Get Out

If you've been wondering how outpatient will work, you're not alone.  We're just figuring it out ourselves - and I must say it feels a little weird to be experiencing something new and unknown given that this is the 4th time I'm going through the chemo treatment.  We're swapping the known for the unknown in exchange for not having the 5-day hospital stay but I think it will be worth it.  Stay tuned for my overall evaluation at the end of the week!

In the interim, here's what this is looking like.  Today is day 1 of 5 and we arrived at the infusion center at 8:00am.  We were there for about 4 hours and this should be the day that we're physically present in the infusion center the longest because I was there for my first bag/medication for a couple of hours before they started the second bag/medication, which is what I went home with.

The second chemo bag is that three-medication cocktail that lasts for 96 hours.  This is the cocktail that is effervescent and it's what made Perv so beepy.  And because it is being infused for 96 hours straight, our infusion center experience for days 2, 3, and 4 (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) will simply be for refills of our take-home infusion bag/pump/backpack.  We're told that those refill visits will only take about an hour.

And What About this Take-Home Backpack, You Ask?  

I had asked our nurse, when we were considering whether or not to try outpatient, how large it would be...little-kid-sized or hiking-the-Alps-sized.  She said little-kid-sized and that was fair...though I was hoping for a Dora the Explorer theme.

(actually it's probably normal-kid-sized given that I'm the size of your average 4th grader!)

So far we haven't named the backpack but we'll see how well we get to know each other this week!  What the backpack has over Perv is that there should be no beeping.  We're being sent home with an instruction booklet for the pump itself including what action to take for various beeping/error messages and "air in line" is one of the possible messages that can occur but, from what we've been told about that being rare, we're cautiously optimistic.

Not having this beep will be key to outpatient working for us because if the backpack beeps we can't fix it on our own.  We'd have to call in and then likely go someplace to have it fixed, all the while there would be no infusion happening...and in order to do outpatient we need to be able to finish by the end of the day on Friday.  At this point all we can do is cross our fingers and toes that this chemo cocktail gets along well with this backpack and all will be well.

One other difference compared to Perv is the sound.  Those of you who had the pleasure of meeting Perv in person heard that the sound of that pump was reminiscent of a coffee maker percolating and it was constant.  The sound of the pump in the backpack is like a little tiny xerox machine making a copy every 5 seconds or so, very faintly in the background.  I guess they all have their own personalities!