Peanut is getting discharged in a few hours! 🙂 Her blood cultures for the past few days have been negative for bacterica growth, so she will be going home on IV antibiotics until Sunday. This morning we will be learning how to operate an additional IV pump that will administer her antibiotics three times a day. In addition, they’ve made one small change to our routine for her broviac care that we found interesting. Normally, when Peanut is done with her TPN (IV Nutrition) for the day (which runs from 7pm to 9am), we flush her IV line with heparin so that no clots develop in the line. From here on out, instead of doing a heparin flush, we will be doing an “ethanol lock”. Our first reaction was ETHANOL?!?!?! That’s right, straight-up pure ethanol alcohol which will kill any bacteria should it enter through her line again. It’s a little tricky, but we will put in just enough ethanol (.3 ml to be exact) to fill the length of her central line, and then we pull it back out before we hook her up to her TPN in the evenings. The worst that could happen is that a tiny bit of alcohol enters her blood stream and she feels a little – well, tipsy 😉

A special thanks to our friends “B & B” for letting me crash at their place last night, instead of the couch in Peanut’s room, so I could get caught up on sleep before going home 🙂 The DH is on his way to Iowa City as I type….we’re homeward bound in 3 hours!!!!