Day +57

I am fine today. Just continue my story...

In NMSC we chose a double bed room, one bed was for me and the others who took care of me. The room was just like a hotel room, quiet, spacious and with attached bath room. I could see mountain and green forest through the windows.

The procedure to insert PICC was scheduled in the morning of 2 December. Before the procedure, the nurse covered my body with a warm and comfortable blanket and then pushed me (to be exact, pushed my bed with me on the bed) to the radiology room. Since my platelet count was still low, I was given platelet transfusion throughout the procedure to prevent excessive bleeding.

In the radiology room, I was transferred to the operation table. This was first time I was laid on the operation table. Even though I was told that this should be a simple procedure which took no longer than half an hour to complete, I still felt anxious and nervous. No matter how smart and strong we are, once we are on the operation table, we will feel that we are weak. The only thing that I could do was kept on praying and recited Bible verses such as Psalm 23.

With the aid of radiology equipment, the radiologist in charge would insert a PICC line through the vein at my upper arm and then follow the vein, all the way up passing through the shoulder and then down again until it reached a place near my heart.

The radiologist identified and marked the vein on my right arm with the aid of ultrasonic equipment. Then he gave Local anesthesia and started to puncture the vein and pushed in the PICC line. No much pain I experienced. On many occasions, the radiologist stopped and mentioned to his assistant that it seemed like something went wrong. This made me nervous again.

At the end the line was fully inserted and a final check only revealed that it was inserted into my artery instead of vein. What an accident? You know, the heart pumps the blood to the artery to be transported to all parts of body. Therefore the blood in the artery is of much higher pressure than of the vein, which returns blood to the heart. The PICC line was then removed immediately. But heavy bleeding occurred at the punctured site. The radiologist and his assistant pressed the artery near my shoulder and elbow firmly to prevent excessive bleeding for at least 20 minutes. At one point he became very nervous when he saw my blood pressure dropped a lot. He requested for extra platelet and also called the hematologist to come. When I saw this, I became very nervous and anxious and my body was shivering continuously.

After 20 minutes, they bandaged my right upper arm tightly, and then started to insert the PICC line on my left arm. I thank God that the line was inserted smoothly this time. However, when they wanted to do clean up job, they noticed that they were unable to take off my cloth. So the only way to take it off was to cut it open :-( Anyway it was the hospital cloth, not my cloth :-)

This thrilling procedure took about 2 hours to complete. We found out later that accident likes this happen rarely. Perhaps I was the only “lucky” one.

After the cleanup job, I was sent back to my room and the third day chemotherapy continued using this newly installed PICC line.

See you next post :-)