Home IV kit
I don’t know if this exists anywhere else or if it was invented by
the Swedish medical care system, or even our county hospital,
but it's absolutely ingenious!
As a CF patient, Henrik tends to have recurring bad infections
in his lungs and sinuses. Four times in 2006 he spent ten days
in the hospital receiving IV antibiotics three times a day for
some nasty bug, which always felt like a big waste of time on
his part and a waste of resources on the hospital’s part. The rest of
the day, when he wasn’t receiving the drip, he was bored out of his mind.
In April 2007, it was time again; a doctor called to confirm that he had some rare
bacterium in his lungs that would require IV antibiotics. Then she said, “Can you bring
your wife in so we can teach her how to give the IV?” We were flabbergasted.
Sure enough, the hospital fitted us out with a set of little IV pods for us to take home.
All they had to do was insert the needle in his arm, which he has to go around with for
the ten days. It also has to be replaced every three days to prevent risk of infection,
but the local clinic can do that.
The hospital’s pharmacy fills these little pods (they call them “bubbles” in Swedish) with just
the right dosage of antibiotic in saline.
The IV pods are pressurized, so you don’t actually have to put them up high—but in the
beginning we thought we had to. After several home IV courses over the years we stopped
bothering with placing them high.
Home IV “bubble”
Empty bubble