Secrets of an IV Junkie

If you've been following this blog for any amount of time, you might know that I'm a super huge fan of my port, which happens to be in my upper left arm. I've had this sucker for 9 years (since I was 18) and I absolutely LOVE it. I love pretty much everything about it: how I can cover it so easily just with long sleeves, how I can vest without any discomfort or inconvenience even when it's accessed, how even in tank tops it's basically invisible when it's not accessed, and how it doesn't, um, get in the way. Ever ;)

The only things I don't like about it are: 1) I can't access it by myself, and 2) it moves more than a chest port (so I've been told) and kinda freaks out some of the nurses who aren't as familiar with the arm placement. But other than that I love it. Well, today I found a third negative, and while it still doesn't convince me that I want my next port to be in my chest, it's still annoying as hell.

Basically, the fact that I can't access the thing by myself means that I am at the mercy of the homecare nurses for pretty much anything, including monthly flushes and dressing changes. This has honestly never bothered me too much b/c the monthly flushes are no big deal and the dressing changes just happen when they come to draw blood labs. So no big problem, right? Right...well, most of the time. This time, though, I'm on IVs for 6 weeks. That's double the time I normally stay on these things, and it's far and away my longest course ever. So because I can't access myself, I just rely on the nurses like normal. And because I have to rely on the nurses, the skin around my port is ALWAYS covered by the dressing and tegaderm. It only gets to "breathe" for like 30 seconds when they pull the old needle, alcohol the area, and then put the new needle in and the new tegaderm on. No time to shower or wash the area, no time to let the skin relax, basically no time to do anything at all. It's normally not an issue, but this time around it's not particularly pleasant.

The nurse just came to change the dressing and my poor arm looks like it wandered through a particularly brutal war zone. The skin is red and irritated - it has little bumps from the tegaderm and the area is totally raw from the sticky adhesive. Yuck. To top it off the port needle has this little place where the needle joins the tubing, and the nurse last time failed to put the usual gauze under that area, so now I have a nice little HOLE in my arm from that thing digging in. Double yuck. Thankfully it's far enough from the actual injection site that I'm not too concerned about infection (and it's under the tegaderm, so clearly the area is sterile), but still. Not fun. I didn't even feel it, most likely because the constant pressure just sort of dulled the whole sensation. Again, more yuck.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for IVs and for all the medical miracles that help CFers and blah blah blah. But truth be told, next Wednesday cannot come fast enough. I am soooo over these IVs and ready to get this damn access pulled already! If not for my sanity's sake, then definitely for my poor arm!!