Bad Veins, Brain Scans & Fred

Yesterday Jaimee had her weekly brain scan, which turned out to be a horrible experience.

When they do her scans, they have to inject this dye into her veins. Well, Jaimee's veins are bad to begin with, and they are weakened from all the medication she has been on. It was getting close to the end of the scan and Jaimee's vein blew. She told the nurse but by the time they could have gotten in there to take the IV out, the scan would have been over. So she laid there in extreme pain waiting for this thing to finish injecting all the dye into her arm. Jaimee says on a scale of 1-10, the pain was about a 9. It take a few days for the medicine to get out of her arm, so her arm has been hurting a lot.

Anyway, the results of this week's brain scan are still positive. The antibiotics are having an effect on the abscess, so the plan is to continue the antibiotics. The doctor wanted to put a PICC line in, but with Jaimee's veins so bad, she is afraid they wouldn't even be able to get it in. So we are going to try oral antibiotics. There are 3 different kinds of heavy antibiotics in addition to all the other medications she is on.

The doctor is concerned that they will hurt her stomach and she won't be able to keep them down. If that happens, they will go with the PICC line. If she is able to keep them down, her next brain scan will be in 7-10 days.

By the way, the abscess will now be known as Fred. Thanks to Ann for suggesting the name. So we want Fred to drop dead!!!