Mistakes

It’s true, everyone makes mistakes but when the mistake inflicts pain on another person, it’s hard to not beat yourself up about it.

Three times I screwed up and failed my mom:

1. The very first time my mom had a chemo infusion, I forgot to put the lidocaine and prilocaine cream on the skin covering her port. When the infusion nurse stuck the port, she screamed out in pain. The nurse looked at me and asked whether we used the numbing cream. And that is when I realized why my mom was prescribed the cream. I felt so bad.

2. After a week of administering the IV antibiotics to my mom to treat the infection in her blood, I had used all of the first of two boxes the pharmacy had given us of the sodium chloride saline flush solution. I instinctively grabbed 2 tubes of what I thought was saline flush and continued administering my mom’s morning dose. I noticed the tubes looked different than the ones from the first box but I assumed the second box had smaller tubes and it didn’t really matter whether we flushed her PICC line with 5mL or 10mL of the saline flush. It wasn’t until I was cleaning up that I realized what I actually flushed her PICC line with before and after the antibiotic was Heparin Lock flush. I panicked! I called the nurse and she said it should be ok, to go ahead and flush it with the sodium chloride saline and monitor for any new bruises or bleeding gums. I felt like the biggest idiot for poisoning my mom. It was a really careless mistake. The pharmacy sent the box of heparin but since we were administering her medication every 8 hours, the nurse said we did not need to use the heparin to prevent clots in the PICC line.

3. Forgot to remind my mom to take her chemotherapy prep medication before her infusion treatment. She is supposed to take Dexamethasone 12 hours and 6 hours before her treatment. I completely flaked and did not remember until we were headed to the clinic the morning of her treatment. FYI, if you forget but have the medication with you, you can just take a dose at the clinic before they start. But I did not have the medication with me, honestly I didn’t even know where my mom had put it in her room. We postponed treatment a couple of days. I was really upset at myself.

My mom was not upset at me for any of these mistakes. She kept apologizing to me for being such a burden and feels so bad that so much is on my shoulders. Admittedly, all of this is very heavy but it’s not her fault either. No one would choose to be sick. Just a crap situation for all of us.