Burning veins??

Emily’s nurse said that IV Benadryl burns so she doesn’t like to give it to kids. Can he take over the counter chewable Benadryl?

Kelly

Kevin only gets oral benadryl, in the beginning when this whole mess started, his veins used to burn. We were getting gammaguard s/d at the time. We now use liquid. If you think it is the benadryl, as Kelly said, try the melting or oral, they are really small. On the other hand, if he always has had an iv push, and it never burned before, that would seem odd. Maybe you could ask if they used s/d because they were out of liquid. Maybe the vein was just too small. When it did happen, we kept a warm rag on the arm or hand where ever he was being infused at the time and it seemed to help, I don’t know if it was just soothing, or if it opened up the vein more, or a combination. Now that we have the port (4 months ago) we do not have that problem anymore. Good luck, and nice to hear from you again. How is Mason doing? How are you doing?
Dawn Kevies mom

I know when I had my IVIG in January I had problems with the vein in the arm I had the infusion. They put a microwave heat pack on it. I was swelling a bit and it was pinkish. The nurse says it was phlebitis; inflammation of a vein. It started right after they put the needle in for my last infusion. As soon as I was done and the lock was gone it felt better but still looked irritated and pinkish.

Sue

This just happened to me yesterday and my nurse said it was phlebitis as well – boy did that STING! It’s still a bit swollen and red this morning… My nurse thinks it’s because we leave the needle in overnight and by the third day the vein is irritated by the needle scratching. Phlebitis can also be caused by irritation to a chemical – like IV Benedryl. If Benedryl is too harsh you can also try Zyrtec, I use the OTC Children’s grape flavored chewable 10mg tablets and that works just fine for me. 😀

Julie-
You have an IV in your hand for 3 days?? My doctor will not keep one in but for only 2 days max. I almost go nuts from the pain when I had hand IV’s because I moved it so much with activities away from the clinic.I started taking it out later at home if it hurt too much and then I finally had no veins left to use.
Swollen sore veins come from poorly inserted IV’s/too much motion when accessed-at least for me.
Now the chest port needle can be in for several days and I gotta be careful when taking a shower.
I take Benadryl pills-take along my own bottle so the insurance company doesn’t charge me $ 2.00 for one pill. Same for my Tylenol.IV Benadryl gives me a severe headache and I’m dizzy/dehydrated for a long time.

Uh yeah – that isn’t normal? They have always done it that way… put it in the first day and pray it lasts… it’s actually in my arm, pretty close to where it bends. I’m not sure I’m going to keep doing that though since I sleep on my side my arm is constantly getting banged and dragged, wiggling the needle around in there. I’ve tried wrapping it in layers of Ace bandages but by the third day my arm is bruised and the vein irritated anyway.

The Benedryl adds to my dehydration too and I’m having trouble getting enough liquids in me to compensate for it. My stomach only holds so much and it takes a long time to empty out. I try to drink at least 4 bottles of 32oz. water/gatorade mix per day but sometimes that isn’t enough and I get the headache. I’m going to try switching to just Zyrtec next time (I was doing Benedryl on infusion days and Zyrtec afterwards for a few days) to see if that helps with the dehydration.

I get a lock put in and the put the needle of my infusion in that lock. When I am done they wrap it up and tell me not to get it wet. This last time in January I had the lock on my left arm. On the 2nd day after she put the needle in it started to bother me hurting me and I was moving my arm around to get rid of the pain and the needle came out and the iVIG was leaking so they changed the lock to my right arm. On the 5th day my right arm was bothering me and I had phlebitis so they put a heat pack on the area that was hot and swollen. It was not worth moving it since it was my last day.

Sue

I have a bag of saline/fluids added on each infusion day. It’s made a big difference. I get dehydrated because the IVIG makes me so tired and so this helps me when I’ve all crashed out for the “rest/recovery days”.
I was the original holdout for not getting a port. Then one day I blew so many IV’s and the nurses were eyeing the tender veins under my wrist area that I secretly scheduled surgey to get my chest port.I showed up on that next Tuesday and all the nurses celebrated my easy access port. I’ve had it for 19 months now and was well worth it.
Still needing infusions 3 days every other week. We were hoping with the added methotrexate I might be able to start spacing the infusion out but not yet.