Accident with 5FU bottle

[rachelfromnyc]

I woke up on the day of disconnecting from the bottle and went to the bathroom and blew my nose. Then I saw there was blood on the sink, my shirt and the floor (ruined my bath mats too). At first I thought it was a nosebleed as I have been having issues with that on my current treatment regimen but it was too much blood for just a nosebleed. Then I saw that one of the connections in the tubing on the bottle came apart and that was the cause! Btw, I didn't feel pain or anything else. I also see that there is a trail of blood from the bedroom to the bathroom, nothing in the bed so it must have happened as I was getting up and not overnight as I was sleeping. Now I am panicking. I reconnected where it came apart and closed the two other clamps. I cleaned up as best as I could, got dressed and cabbed it to the hospital. I live close by so it was only 10 minutes or so and when I got there, I was seen right away. Thank goodness the bottle was empty at that point. The nurse told me that I should've wiped the connections with an alcohol pad before reattaching otherwise, I did the right thing in coming into the hospital immediately. But everything was ok in the end.

Anyone else have issues like this?

[boxhill]

I'm not familiar with the bottle type of pump, so no. The only time I had a strange thing happen with my pump was once when I looked down the next day and realized that blood had backed up into the line leading to the bag. I went straight in and they detached me, figured out how much 5FU I had left, what the pump time should be, and we started over. Had to add quite a lot of time to my on-pump phase, unhappily. But no free-flowing blood or 5FU fluid.

It turned out that this had happened to several people. Apparently there were several duds in that batch of pumps that did not pump hard enough to keep the 5FU flowing in, so the blood started to flow out.

I was pretty appalled when I looked down and saw blood in the line, how much worse it must have been to realize that you were bleeding all over the place. Congratulations on your presence of mind!

[heiders33]

I had an accident like that once, but it was the needle nicking a vein in my sleep. Thankfully the 5FU was done flowing, and I took a Lyft to the MSK urgent care and they checked it and disconnected it. It was scary to see all that blood though!

[claudine]

A few cycles ago, my husband had a bad coughing fit which, unbeknownst to him, disconnected his chemo pump. When he went to flush it (he removes it himself) he realized that he was injecting the fluid under his skin... Ended up going to the place where they install the pump, and they cleaned up the mess pretty easily.

[rachelfromnyc]

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences. Guess this thing isn’t accident proof so have to be careful next time and check the connections. It’s unfortunate because I was finally getting comfortable/confident with the bottle. The first few treatments, I felt I just had to hang out at home all day. But the most recent treatment, the day before the bottle incident, I was out and about doing errands, taking the subway etc with no issues. Now I’m kind of scared and anxious to do it all over again next week.

[AmyG]

My hospital gives you a little sling bag to put the pump in, did yours give you anything like that? Makes my pump a nonissue but I have to be careful with the tubing with 5 huge dogs and a very active 8 month old. He likes to pull on it.

[rachelfromnyc]

My hospital gives you a little sling bag to put the pump in, did yours give you anything like that? Makes my pump a nonissue but I have to be careful with the tubing with 5 huge dogs and a very active 8 month old. He likes to pull on it.

I have the standard issue black fanny pack. I wear it tight above my stomach but below my chest and it's not too bad especially when it gets close to being empty.

Thanks everyone for weighing in. Going in again for another treatment tomorrow so I'll just have to be super careful as this thing is not accident proof.

[AlexandraZ]

Hope your infusion went well today Rachel! I'm sorry you had that scary experience.

Wishing you the happiest of holidays! Hopefully your side effects will be wearing off by Christmas Day!