In spite of the blood thinners, which are thinning Julie's blood, the blood clot remains. Her doctors decided the port (site/cause of the clot) needs to be removed so Julie went to the (Spokane) Valley Hospital outpatient clinic today, where it was found that her blood was actually too thin for an invasive procedure, so Julie will discontinue one of her blood thinners over the weekend and will be retested Monday morning - if her blood has thickened a bit, the port will be removed Monday. (Guess which thinner Julie gets to temporarily discontinue - the pill or the shot in the stomach?) Whether or not the port is still there, it can no longer be used for her chemo, so a PICC line was inserted today - a less invasive procedure, from a bleeding point of view. (See below for PICC line definition.) Today is the first day that Julie’s neck is less painful, though it is still somewhat swollen from the clot.
From http://www.cancerbackup.org.uk/ and wikipedia - A PICC line is inserted into one of the large veins in the arm [usually near the bend of the elbow] from where it is threaded into the superior vena cava. (The superior vena cava is a large, yet short vein that carries deoxygenated blood from the upper half of the body to the heart's right atrium.) The initials PICC stand for peripherally inserted central catheter.
Friday, August 28, 2009
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