On Friday and Saturday July 22 and 23, I learned how to administer chemotherapy through the port in Sam’s chest.  It was both an incredibly sobering and, at the same time, empowering experience: to get to play a role in vanquishing the leukemia from my strong teen’s body.  

I had awesome teachers too: the nurses at the Bass Center at LPCH are incredible. They taught me the mnemonic “SASH” so I could easily remember the order:

Saline into the line first and then do a little draw back to make sure you see blood in the tube so you know the line is open.

Ara-C: the chemotherapy (also called cyterabene): administer this slowly over 5-10 mins

Saline again to flush the line, administering the 1st 2 mls slowly as they are pushing the remaining chemo into his vena cava.

Heparin: the final step is an anticoagulant that goes in and keeps the line open until the next dose. Hi 

He had 8 doses over the last 11 days and I administered 7 of them.  And I appreciated the nurses use of the “gradual release” model for learning how to administer chemo too: on Friday they did “Nurse administers, Kathy watches” and then I got to do the saline flush and the heparin while they watched. And then Saturday, Sam and I came into the clinic and they watched as I did the entire process (great to see another discipline such as pediatric oncology, use a strategy the we educators love). Then Sunday and Monday I was on my own with my best cheerleader, Sam, who was both super helpful (holding his line while I got the syringe ready) and super encouraging (even as I accidentally tugged at his line 😬)

And this past Saturday, Zack joined in and watched too and was super supportive.

Take that leukemia!!!! 💪🏼💪🏼