Rebel Scum

Today’s procedure was the placement of a PICC line in my arm. A PICC line is a long, slender catheter that reaches a large vessel in the upper body. This will allow for the, Oh so lovely & caustic, chemotherapy to be delivered without obliterating all the small vessels in my arms at the same time.

Sounds easy enough and it probably is for most. The mere mention of her imminent destruction sends Marla into a fit. She fights back. After having copious amounts of Lidocaine applied to my arm, ipod turned up loud, I thought this would go quick. Why? Why Rachelle, do you do this yourself?

After several minutes passed, I asked the nice 7’ burly man in scrubs, “Should I be feeling this much pressure in my arm?” he replied by asking, “Is it pain?”
Fine! Make me say it, “Yes, now it is pain, you nugget!” My nerves are shot to hell, I have a meat thermometer sticking out of my arm and I made the HUGE mistake of looking at it, I’ve sweat ½ my body weight in the past 10 minutes, I’ve noticed that you’ve brought in another person to stand there and look at me on the table, and now I’m bawling like my 3 year old when he can’t find his Thomas the Tank Engine toy. Marla has put enough pressure & displacement on the vessels left of my heart that it was too difficult to feed the line to where it needed to go. Right arm, your turn!

Here come the reinforcements. Thanks to a husband with a good cell phone, and modern medical breakthroughs, such as fast acting drugs like Lorazepam, I was able to calm down, get back up on the table and have my right arm prepped for the same thing. Thankfully, this time, it only took a few minutes with some mild discomfort and a lot less squirming from me.

Now life continues with my new appendage, Han.