PICC Line Anyone?

I’ve been in the hospital for one week. Every morning I wake up and it feels like a dream. I just want to go back to sleep, wake up again, but be in my own bed. Since summer started, Lily has been crawling into bed with me each morning, we talk and cuddle, and then she always says, “Let’s go into the living room and watch cartoons.” Every morning. I miss that.

But yesterday was Father’s Day and Andy went home to pick up Lily. They were able to have lunch together and she gave him a big hug and a hearty “Happy Father’s Day!” It wasn’t the ideal Father’s Day; but this past week has been such a blaring reminder of what an amazing dad and husband Andy is. I’ve seen, that to Andy, family is the most important thing. He’s had to stop everything, right in the middle of his field training to take care of me. And he’s always had a smile on his face, always been calm and collected. Just what I need.

So I must talk about hospital life and I must laugh about it.

This is what I’ve learned: If you want rest, don’t come to a hospital. Let me give you an example by recounting the last two days. There is some blood involved. So, if you are faint of heart, you may want to skip this part!

After Andy left to go back to S.R., they came in to take out my IV port that they had put in the day before. It was really irritating my hand and I couldn’t use it. This was no good, so they had put a new one in my other hand. Now they were taking out that one to put in a PICC line. A PICC line goes up high on your arm. Now, I don’t have to be poked when they draw blood or if they have to give me meds. It just goes through the pick line.

Now, I wasn’t prepared for this little procedure. I thought, they’ll just stick it in, lickety split. Not exactly. 2 nurses came in with shower caps and masks and covered me with a blue sheet and shielded my face. They brought in an ultrasound machine to find a good vein along with a various assortment of dressings and tubes.

“Whoa, whoa, now wait a minute, people. Is this going to hurt? No one told me we were having an impromptu surgery here!”

When they told they would numb the arm, I calmed a bit. “I can do this, I can do this. What time I am afraid I will trust in you.”

I have to admit, I was pretty brave. I even looked a little…. Until I saw some blood.

Things went well, until later that day when my heart started racing. “Am I having a heart attack? What now?” On the monitor I watched my heart rate go up to 197 beats a minute. Once it even went up to 200. “Well, this isn’t normal!” Fortunately these little “episodes” don’t last long; though they are a little disconcerting. I guess the catheter just aggravates that area sometimes. Not much can be done about it.

Lil came later and that made everything better. After she left Andy and I couldn’t go to sleep for a long time. Around 12 we finally went to sleep, only to be awakened at 1 a.m. to take a chest xray. (to check the pick line) “Hmmm….you couldn’t do this at 10 or 11 o’clock last night????” I went back to sleep to be awakened again at 6 a.m. for them to draw blood. Then at 7 a.m. so they could do an EKG. At this point, I have to laugh or I am going to cry. “Couldn’t we coordinate these little “drop ins” a little better?”

To go back to sleep now was pointless. So my sweet nurse brought me graham crackers and hot tea and I decided to start my day a little early.

I’m recording this so that in 3 months when I’m up at 2 a.m. feeding Bauer Boy and feeling sick and tired, I can think back to this time and say, “If I could do hospital life; I can do this - piece of cake.”