How to prepare for your BMT: Click here for a preparation checklist

Choosing Your Caregiver

Getting Your Central Catheter


Choosing Your Caregiver
A caregiver is a family member or friend who can be with you for the majority of your BMT treatment and recovery. Caregivers can rotate, but an adult is needed to help you throughout your post-transplant care. As difficult as it may seem to find someone to fill this role, the caregiver is a key component of a full and safe recovery. It’s important to start deciding who can fill this role prior to coming to the hospital to begin the "workup" evaluation.

We encourage the caregiver to be present :

• During the workup process. The medicines we give you during your bone marrow biopsy may cause drowsiness.
• When we put in your central venous catheter. We often do this as an outpatient procedure, requiring anesthesia.

In both these situations, your caregiver will need to drive or escort you home.

A caregiver sometimes helps with medical tasks, such as giving you medicine. Your caregiver can also help identify symptoms to report to the doctor. Your caregiver will need to help with some of your treaments at home, such as IV medicine and nutritional support. Initially, a home care nurse may administer these treatments to you. Often, however, you and your caregivers will be trained to do this. The caregiver’s primary function is to support you and help you if you become sick.

Other tasks for caregivers may include:

• driving or accompanying you to the clinic
• preparing meals
• overseeing your schedule for taking medicines
• calling for emergency assistance if you are injured, become ill, or develop a fever.

You may be doing some of these tasks on your own; however, most patients initially experience fatigue and lack of concentration after high doses of chemotherapy or radiation.

Having a caregiver present is an essential safety precaution after your BMT. Many patients may have an increased risk of bleeding and infection.

Getting your central catheter
During the pre-transplant process, we will insert a thin tube into a neck vein. This tube is called a central venous catheter. The catheter makes it possible for the medical team to:

• draw blood
• give you medicines, fluids, and nutritional supplements
• collect stem cells (if you are having an autologous transplant)
• transfuse blood products
• transfuse the stem cells on your transplant day 

Catheter placement is usually an outpatient procedure. We will insert your catheter either in an operating room or a radiology procedure room at the hospital. We will put you under local or general anesthesia. The surgeon will then make a small incision (about 1 inch) in your neck or below your collarbone. The catheter goes into a large vein leading to your heart. The other end of the catheter tunnels under the skin and exits through a small incision in your upper chest area. We will leave the catheter in throughout the transplant process. We will teach you how to care for the catheter to prevent it from becoming infected or clotted.