Diedra Keogh has a nickname for everything. She calls the hydration station she carries around Paco the Pack.

Paco is actually an innovation created by nurse Casey Peat to help Diedra feel better after chemotherapy treatments for colon cancer. Diedra gets extremely dehydrated after long bouts with nausea and vomiting, a side effect of chemotherapy, that leaves her weak and light-headed. Diedra said she has trouble drinking water because the chemotherapy makes it taste terrible.

Hydration and chemotherapy

The innovation from Peat is a backpack that carries a bladder of three liters of water. A line from the bladder feeds intravenously to a port in Diedra’s chest. Having the backpack helps Diedra avoid multiple trips a week for hydration treatments at UCHealth Pikes Peak Regional Hospital in Woodland Park which is 64 miles away from her home in Fairplay.

“I am very grateful for this, it has been a lifesaver for me,’’ Diedra said during a recent hospital visit. “A lot of times before I come in here, I feel weak, I feel lightheaded and dizzy. It’s like you feel foggy; you just feel like you can’t walk very well. Once I started doing the hydration, I can feel it coming in, it’s crazy.

“My fogginess in my brain goes away. My body feels like I can move it, I can actually move without falling over. And when I stand up, I don’t get dizzy.’’

Peat, infusion nurse manager at Pikes Peak Regional Hospital, knows that many of her cancer patients come from far away in rural Colorado. A long drive multiple times a week takes a toll on patients, their family and friends.

“Oncology patients come to the hospital for doctor’s appointments, scans, lab work, infusions. They come to the hospital so often, and we want to give patients more of a choice with their care because there are so few choices with their care,’’ Peat said.

Empowering patients with at-home care choices

With the hydration kit, patients like Diedra can come to the hospital once a week for a 20-minute visit and carry three liters of solution, administered over 72 hours, home in the backpack. Or patients can instead come three times a week and receive one liter per day, if that is more favorable.

“The foundation of this program gives patients a choice in their care. It’s providing care at home versus the hospital. Patients don’t necessarily want to be here. I think we enjoy the company, they enjoy the company, and we become an extension of family, however, we’re not their favorite people to see,’’ Peat said.

On Feb. 5, Keogh experienced severe stomach pain and her husband, Patrick, drove her to Pikes Peak Regional Hospital.

“I thought it was a kidney stone, I really did. But the doctor was like, ‘that is not a kidney stone.’’’

Doctors advised her to go to UCHealth Memorial Hospital North. A colonoscopy revealed a large tumor, which was removed during surgery. She went home from the hospital Feb. 7.

“I got home, and I was doing good,’’ she said. A few weeks later, while sitting on the couch, the woman who could run three to five miles a day before cancer, couldn’t get up off the couch.

“And I said something to him, and I went to say Spotify but I don’t think that came out right. He looks at me and said ‘why are you talking funny?’  And he looks up the signs of a stroke and hands it to my daughter.

“She was reading them off and she was hitting them all,’’ Patrick Keogh said. He dialed 911 and then called their son, who works as a firefighter and EMT, and said: “I don’t care how fast it takes you, get your butt down here.’’

Diedra remembers seeing Braden, their son, come through the door of their family home.

“He walks in the house and says, ‘Hi, I’m Braden with Hartsel Fire.’ And I said, ‘Hi Braden, I’m your mommy.’’ And, he helped put me on the gurney and helped put me in the helicopter.’’

A helicopter took Diedra to UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central, a comprehensive stroke center, where she received a clot-busting drug. Specially-trained interventional radiologists then threaded a catheter into Diedra’s brain. On the end of the catheter, a vacuum sucked up a large clot.

“They vacuumed the clot out of my brain. The doctor said he went five times in there and vacuumed it out. It was a big clot, so it was a massive stroke,’’ she said.

The same day, doctors discovered a PFO – patent foramen ovale – a hole in the heart that for most people causes no adverse health effects. Diedra had lived with it without consequences for all of her 53 years.

An active woman, Diedra and her husband, a long-distance truck driver, own a pizza truck that is parked near the South Park Museum in Fairplay. Before her illness, the two made pizza dough by hand and delighted hungry customers.

Hydrated during cancer treatment

Months after the cancer diagnosis and stroke, Diedra is starting to be able to make the dough again. Having Paco the Pack, the portable hydration station on board, is key to her progress.

“After I get the three liters, I’m like a whole new person,’’ Diedra said. “The one liter helps, but after the two or three days that I have it, I feel like a whole new person.’’

Her husband said he noticed that after just one liter instead of three, Diedra would do well for a day and a half, then she would lose energy.

“Then I would feel like I just wanted to fall over,’’ she said.

“This has been amazing, and I would recommend it to anyone who lives far away and doesn’t want to come in three times a week,’’ Diedra said.