Friday, September 16, 2011

Pump wars


God Bless America:

Good morning my gang members:

I’m pooped!

I may never have explained this before, but chemo is delivered intravenously and because it has to go in at certain rate it is pump driven, not gravity fed. The pumps directs the fluid through a little plastic encased metal sensor which sends info to a computer processor to monitor the fluids for air bubbles and other things to ensure patient safety. When the pump sensor detect an air bubble they beep and buzz and make this god awful alarm that won’t stop until a nurse fixes the problem.

The procedure for fixing the problem is of course primitive compared to method of alert. The nurse will usually press an eject button, the plastic encased sensor will pop out the pump housing and the nurse will vigorously snap the plastic encasement with a fingernail to dislodge an errant bubble causing the problem.

One of these things beeping and buzzing is enough to drive you to distraction, two will drive you crazy, and more than that sound like a slot machine floor gone crazy. It’s discordant, noisy, and loud. In short it is everything your parents warned about when they commented on modern music. It’s painful.

Hospital staffing is lower at night so when the machines decide – and I think they do decide – to raise havoc in a cancer ward and begin the auditory assault the nurses are overrun. The patients tend to be on the machine’s side as each press the nurse call button to add one more clank to the calamitous clinking cacophony (its cheap alliteration I know, but I’m tired).

So at first the nurses stop, plan their attacks, and then go out in force with middle fingers tucked behind their thumbs like infantrymen ready to fire rifles going on combat patrols.

They nurses usually win the pitched battle in short order with blood blisters trying to form under fingernails. But like that WWII Japanese soldier who finally surrendered in the 1970’s because he never got the word the war was over, there is always one or two of these future Terminators that won’t give in.

Last night one of these last stands occurred in my room. My IV pump it seems was one of the ringleaders determined to go down fighting ‘till the wee hours of the morning. It was nurse against machine; a portent of the coming struggle for earthly domination (A little too strong? I think not. As I write this, another of these pumps has resumed its auditory attack down the hall. I can hear it in the distance.).

At about 2230, just as the chemo patients were beginning to doze off with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, the pumps attacked.  The nurses won in a couple of hours like they usually do, but the resistance of lone pumps was unusually staunch.

As the battle at my bedside dragged the pump was definitely getting the upper hand. The nurses ejected and tapped; ejected and tapped, and ejected and tapped some more – all to no effect. Then the nurses began changing the IV tubing in hopes of placating the evil pumps, but that too went for naught. Precious minutes turned to quarter hours and those into hours as 0300 loomed on the clock.

In a final act of desperation the nurses went for nuclear option and changed the pump. This is usually a last ditch action because there are only limited number of refurbished brainwashed replacements. The brainwashing isn’t permanent and refurbished pumps revert back to their dastardly ways once they come in contact with other Terminator pumps. It’s called the Mary Kay Effect.

By 0300 it was all over; just in time for me to have my chemo loaded, blood drawn, pre-meds administered, and quack, quack, quack.

So I didn’t get much sleep last night, but like a modern Herodotus I was there to report to you the struggle of man over machine.

Peace to all,

Bill

No comments:

Post a Comment