If all goes well, and I've got my fingers crossed, Karen will be coming home in the morning. Betty went back to the rest home (ECF) today and is much more comfortable there, she recognized it as "home", which is a really good thing. She'll be getting IV therapy at the hospital, more antibiotics, until the 13th of March, then they'll re-evaluate her infection. Hopefully it'll be cured by then, 'cause Debbie and Ric are leaving on vacation on the 14th... Debbie will be running Betty back and forth to the hospital daily, it seems that they don't have anyone at the home that can administer the drugs. Thankfully, she's not tearing off her dressings or disturbing her PICC line... since someone is bound to ask me what a PICC line is... well, the "P" stands for peripheral. It's like a 22Ga line threaded into the SVC (Superior Vena Cava) through an arm vein. That's about all I know about it... it's a long-term thing, as opposed to an intermittent IV. Incidentally, all of Yeah, yeah, but it's still a needle, right? Right. I've gained a lot of confidence in my venipuncture abilities lately, but that varies on a daily basis, I'm afraid. I'm attempting to do venipunctures on people that I would've called the experts in on a few months ago. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I think that I got some good news today at work... the supervisor is thinking about having me come in at 08:00 instead of 09:00. This is a good thing. Coming to work at 09:00 is civilized, but getting off at 17:30 pretty much sucks. I haven't really made much of a big deal about it, but whenever I'm there early and they ask me to do something, I clock in. That makes for OT, and OT gets noticed. In a negative way, of course. And the hour between 16:30 and 17:30 really drags most of the time. Maybe I'll do an ER patient, but mostly not, I just sit and practice my skills on 3D rendering. Which is only good up to a point, I'm already pretty damned good at it. So... it's past my bedtime now. I'm really looking forward to seeing Karen tomorrow evening.
the IVs that we use at the hospital, except for some very isolated cases, are nylon catheters. There is a needle/stylette that's inserted into the vein, then the nylon part is threaded over it... hard to explain, but very effective, and it allows a lot more motion and comfort than the steel needles did.