Liam's central line requires a lot of maintenance and care. For those who don't know a central line is, it is a catheter that hangs from his chest that goes through a vein to his heart. Liam has it so he doesn't have to get IVs and needles every time they take blood, give him chemo, antibiotics or a blood transfusion, since he has multiple of these every week. Is is very handy, but also a huge source of stress for us, because of the risk of infection, etc.
Liam doesn't seem to notice it, he jumps around like it's just a part of him, it mainly freaks us out when he's jumping around or sliding on his stomach!
Last night we went to do the weekly dressing change and found that it had moved farther out of his chest. The "cuff" that used to be under his skin was outside. We had no idea how bad this was, but we tend to panic about everything with the central line. I paged the oncologist last night, emailed him a picture, he reassured us that it still looked safe (thank goodness, as this was around 9pm, needless to say we didn't want to go to the hospital). The doctor saw us right away this morning and did an xray to make sure it was still in place.
The good news is that it is still in the right place. The bad news is that because it moved, it just freaks us out even more!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_venous_catheter
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