What a Nightmare!

Today has turned out to be quite a nightmare. Ben had part two of his urology testing today (part one went well -- as well as a catheter in the who-ha can go). Today they had to see if his kidneys had any scarring. That involved starting an IV. This is normally a pretty easy procedure for most, but not for Ben. He is SO difficult to get IV started when he is under for surgery, let alone awake. He has just been stuck so many times in the past, his veins are forever fragile. I knew this IV was going to be tricky, so I scheduled Interveinous to start the IV (a department that starts IV's by using ultrasound). We were fortunate enough to get the attending radiologist as the person to attempt. Well to make a VERY long and bloody story a little shorter... he wasn't successful after TWO HOURS of sticking. The PIC Line nurse (another kind of IV) was also unsuccessful. The Urologist was called and we were told that he still needed this test, even if we had to come back. Since Ben went without eating for 8 hours before this test (this was also something he didn't need to do because we were informed once we got there that they would NOT sedate Ben due to his complications and anesthesia wasn't there to administer anesthesia so he couldn't get that either) and we were already there and invested in finishing this, we decided to try one last way. This involved sticking a butterfly needle in his arm and just quickly pumping in the nuclear med by hand. I could have just hugged the radiologist who gave us this idea because it finally worked! And I learned to just ask for this first next time.

Ben then had to wait 90 minutes - which was fine because it gave him time to forget about what he just went through. However, every time he looked at the band aid on his finger, he would start to cry all over again. When the time came for the scans, he laid completely still for the 30 minutes and just watched the light show (I had to beg and plead for this light show, I was starting to sound like a crazy person. I could tell they didn't quite understand how this light show is better than any drug you can give Ben. I wouldn't give up and I finally got a doctor who agreed to borrow it from another department - he was probably tired of hearing me. Once they saw how much Ben LOVED it and didn't move for the entire time, they understood and was asking their manager for one).

Ben is doing well now and has pretty much forgotten about the whole ordeal. What a day! This test better give them the answers they need. Anyway, tomorrow Ben has an appointment with the Urologist to discuss all the results. I should know then what the plan is with surgery.


Here are some pictures of our cute little band aid bandit! After the forth band aid, they stopped putting them on. I think they stopped because it was drawing too much attention to the number of times Ben was being stuck and they didn't want to scare any kids who ran into us during the 90 minute waiting period. Either that or they didn't have enough band aids to endure the long hall of Ben's stick-a-thon.