Whats Makes You Mad? Where is your line in the sand? 2 of 2

Whats Makes You Mad? Where is your line in the sand?  2 of 2

This blog  of a newsletter I received from the manufacturer of the pain pump I have in my stomach, Medtronics.  The company asked a user of the pump to answer some questions, candidly regard his experiences and of course his answers were all positive, more of less.  So here is the continuation of my recent experience with the Medtronics SyncroMed II Pain Pump.  No where does he mention or does the company mention that there is a chance of them missing the pumps refill port and injecting the medicine, what ever it may be, morphine, fentynal, combination of the two or any other medicines that it is approved for.  I am also pretty sure as is my wife who attended all my appointments for the first several years that they never said in the pumps sales pitch that you could possibly “DIE” when you come in for an in standard office visit which usually is no more than 5 minutes is spent on the actual pump refill.  From what we were told after my incident is the process for refilling a pump is (or should be) as follows:

Pump Refill Procedure:

1.  A handheld computer with reader is placed over the pump and programming in the pump is pulled to compare with what is actually removed.  The readings will include,                       medication, size of pump (20ml or 40ml), dosages programmed, low pump alarm level with alarm date, estimated refill date, number of times the Bolus device was utilized (includes dates, times, as well as unsuccessful tries) and more important the amount of medicine left in the pump.

2.  They start by cleaning the pump site and then will align a plastic template of the pump with node on side of pump, which then aligns the port hole in the template with that on the pump.

3.  Insert needle through template port hole and into port opening on pump.  Attached to the needle is a filter, tube and empty syringe to catch remaining medicine in pump.

4.  They then pull back on the syringe handle to approx. 5ml, they are looking for color, clarity of the fluid to confirm it is medicine and not spinal fluid or other.   This is repeated until        no more fluid can be retrieved. This places the amount of fluid in the pump at zero. Fresh start.  What Makes You Mad?  Where is Your Line in the Sand?

5.  They first check with you and show you the label to confirm the medication in, and the name on the syringe are in fact you and yours.  They then take the needle with the filter and         tube still attached and the needle still in the pumps fill port (this is where they made my boo boo) and now attach a syringe filled with either 20ml or 40ml of your medicine and       and perform the process in reverse.  They will inject 5ml-10ml of the replacement medicine into the pump, pull back a bit and look for clarity and color again.  If fine, they will inject another 5ml-10ml and keep repeating the process until the pump is full.

6.  Finally, they remove the needle, clean the pump site and then re-check the computers programming.  Here they make any necessary programming changes, confirm the pump is        reading the new amount, check and compare that what was pulled out matches or is close to what the pump says should have been in there. If so the other than oral medication issues the pump refill is complete.

What happened to me was as they were removing the remaining medication from my pump, in pulling back on the syringe the needle was accidentally pulled out of the pump and into what referred to as a “Pocket” which is an area surrounding the pump and it is filled with spinal fluid and various other fluids which are different in color than the clear medication.  So, when they began filling the pump they assumed the needle was still in the pumps fill port and in fact was not.  All 40ml of my medicine was injected directly into me causing a chemical induced overdose, requiring 911 to be called, I was in intubated, CPR performed several times, was not able to breath on my own at the hospital, numerous bags of the drugs antidote was given via one of the four tubes running from my arms, various other tubes were needed and family members needed to be called, but that’s another story.  My issue is that this story makes it out to be that it so plain Jane, easy breezy, nothing to it.  But having been using the pump now fourteen (14) years, 4 pump replacements during that time, with on average a “Standard Office Visit” every 6 six weeks.  It breaks down to 112 pump refills over 14 years and any one of them could have been my last

Thank you all again for reading my blogs and I would like you to know that everyone of your comments and responses are read and accepted with great joy, no matter if they are positive or negative.  I am open in my blog post and would ask nothing but the same from your responses.  As my blog site header say, “PAIN WITHOUT HUMOR IS JUST PAINFUL”

Here’s wishing you and yours a very Merry Holiday Season.  

2 of 2