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Biliary Drain Problems After VDC Chemotherapy

Our lives change daily and hourly but the majority of the time the changes fall within an expected range of possibilities.

With cancer, nothing is expected or unexpected. It goes back to my sister Kathleen’s answer to inquiries as to how Mathew was doing. “Which fifteen minutes are you interested in?”

The journal entry and texts messages in this post will represent 15 minutes, a few hours or a moment, a feeling, an event. This is life, specifically, this is life with cancer.

From Mathew’s Journal     May 8

Dr. Donovan

Therapy - most helpful- least burdensome.

 - 1 every other week
  start there and then change

 - goal
- give some thought into how your beliefs and intellectual pursuits
dovetail with being plastered to the chair.

-being plastered to the chair could be an opportunity for greater awareness
or it could be just an obstacle to pass to get to the good stuff.




TEXTS BETWEEN MATHEW AND MOM

(I needed to go to the grocery store and run some errands. My Mom came to sit with Mathew.)


Everything ok?
Sent May 9

                          Yea. I’m leaking out my bandages. I rebandaged.
                          Received May 9

How much leakage?
Sent May 9

                          Soaked the bandage.
                          Can I take more Dilaudid?
                          Received May 9

No. I’m on my way.
Need to call the doctor.
Sent May 9

                         Yeah. I don’t think it’s an emergency.
                         It may have been the way I was laying on it.
                         Received May 9



TEXTS BETWEEN ARPIE AND ME

We may be headed down to Moffitt.
Will know in about 5 minutes.
Sent May 9

                          K.
                          Received May 9


The explanation for the texts is here in a text I sent to my niece Allison a few days later.

"They had capped the drain 3 weeks ago. He had his VDC treatment Thursday and Friday he started soaking through his bandage around the catheter.
He went in and they said there was a clog and they changed out some wires."

Both times he has had trouble with the biliary drain after VDC. 


This becomes important because when they did this I remember wondering about his counts being low and them exposing his in the IR.
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