Quote:
Originally Posted by UncleWede
If I remember from 20 years ago when my baby brother had one, don't the PICC lines go thru the vein and directly into the heart? I can't remember about the heart part. Keeping that thing clean/open with regular heprin flushes was a major hassle, but the ability to infuse or draw blood without ANOTHER needle prick is invaluable.
Even in my own trials for diabetes, there are a few days where they need to do blood sugar challenges. I spend 4-6 hours in the office where they feed me a measured amount of glucose, then do about a dozen blood draws. If they had to stick me 12 times I'd be done with the trial.
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Yes. PICC lines are a real hassle and has to be maintained constantly. But in many ways much better than getting a straight IV. With the chemo drugs I've talked about Oxaliplatin is some real nasty stuff. I've heard some people that did go the standard IV route and they paid the price with issues with their veins along with excruciating pain when the drug is administered.
The most preferred method is to install a port or sometimes referred to as a power port in the chest. It's under the skin and to access it, the medical staff just pushes a needle straight through the skin into the port. The needle they use is no joke and looks like a damn harpoon. When I got stuck with this thing, it bloody hurt like crazy; even with them spraying numbing spray over the port. I figured out how to get around this problem by putting on lidocaine creme on the port area an hour or so before I went in for my infusion. After doing this, I didn't feel a thing. Still hated my port though because it stuck up through my skin as a bump. It was placed on my left side right where a seat belt strap would lay across me so it got irritated. And I developed a nausea reflex every time the nurse would flush the port out with saline. Got tired of this feeling of nausea with the saline flush and having to get heparin injections along with it. When I finished chemo, I had the port yanked out of me 2 weeks later.