As you may remember, I have to go to the hospital once a month for an IV. It is Pamidronate...or Aredia...and it tells my bones to hold onto their calcium. This is very important for someone with Multiple Myeloma because the cancer eats holes in your bones. Seriously...round punched out holes called osteolytic lesions or "lytic lesions" for short.
I have a few in my skull and several throughout my spine. I have to be careful in this weather that I do not fall or get into a car accident because I could literally break my back! I am also not supposed to start power lifting at the gym...so I am being extra careful and trying to refrain from any exercise whatsoever...LOL...just kidding!
Anyway, many women have to have this Aredia for osteoporosis and most get an injection once or twice a year. I get a three hour IV drip once a month. The good part is that I can go to the hospital and they put in the IV and the Pamidronate is in a vacuum bottle (looks like a baby bottle) and I can go home. After 3 hours, I take out the IV and I am done. For a year it has been going very well and I have not had an issue...until last month.
The Chemo rooms were all full and the nurses were very busy. I was happy to get the nurse I did, because she is gentle and very nice. She joked around with Mark and I and she inserted my IV. We left to go to lunch and run some errands. Shortly after leaving the Chemo area, I felt the IV pinching me. Sometimes it does...and I am not a baby so I sucked it up and proceeded on my way.
Mark and I went for lunch and a little shopping and I continuously tried to change the position of my arm to alleviate the pinching sensation. Mark called me a bad name -- referring to my "whining" about it -- and so I shut up. When I got home I removed my jacket and looked at my arm. The IV was inserted in the middle of my forearm and from there up to my elbow I was very swollen and hard as a rock. Hence the title of this post...
I pulled out the IV and only clear liquid came back out of my arm...crap!! The pinching I was feeling was the Pamidronate pumping into my arm, and not my vein!!!! I called the hospital and they had me return. The nurse was very apologetic and reinserted a new IV into my other hand. We waited to be sure it was not interstitial (big medical word...LOL) and she said my other arm was fine. Not to worry.
I went home and googled it and found that sometimes there is significant damage to the tissue and necrosis (tissue death) could occur. FML! I kept it elevated and iced it. It kept getting worse. By Sunday I could not even touch my arm, it was so sore. I went to the ER to have it checked. The chemo that I am am on increases my chances of developing blood clots so I needed to have it checked.
The ER doctor confirmed that there was no abscess and no blood clot, but he diagnosed it as Cellulitis. This is an infection of the deeper skin tissues. It can become very serious and is closely related to Necrotising Fasciitis or Flesh Eating Disease!!! My mom had cellulitis and was laid up with IV antibiotics for 10 days. I was travelling out of the country (I'll talk about that in another post) on the following Saturday so this was not good. I had an IV antibiotic that day, filled a prescription for oral antibiotics and had to return the next day for another IV.
The next day I went back for the IV and after waiting 3 hours to see the doctor in ER, (not the same one as the day before), he determined that it was not Cellulitis but simply a reaction to the chemicals in the Pamidronate. For good measure we ran the IV and I continued to take the oral antibiotics, but it would just take time for it to settle down.
Today it is 4 weeks from that incident. My arm is much, much better, but still sore to the touch at the IV insertion site and on the upper forearm. I am going today for the Pamidronate again and will have them put it into my hand where it will be immediately obvious if it is interstitial and I will wait 5 minutes before leaving.
Sigh...nothing I do is ever easy!!
