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| Saturday, February 03, 2007 |
| Going central |
I don't know what reminded me. Perhaps it was the chills thread that set me to thinking about the things that make my skin crawl. The memory came back to me as I was driving, a sense-memory so strong that I could think it to have been yesterday, but it was ten - no, ten and a half years ago.
Hospitals hold strong connotations of fear and sadness for many people, but I was never one of them. Even now I sometimes work in hospitals, and enjoy it, but a smell or a sound will strike me unexpected and make my skin crawl. Which is strange, because the smells and sounds never bothered me when I was actually in hospital. Perhaps it is the accompanying memory of helplessness and weakness that leaves me gazing at my hands in the hope that their strength and health will remind me that I am not ill. Spending time in hospital, you see yourself in the mirror so infrequently - snatched glimpses on the way to and from the bathroom, when your focus is on getting back to bed more than examining your reflection - you see the loss of health in your own hands rather than in your face.
I don't like IV's. I feel like I can't use the hand they're in, and it becomes stiff and swollen. I don't like them, but on the whole, they're not too bad. They're no good for nutrition, though - the feed is too thick, it needs a larger port. Which is why I had the central line put in. They changed it weekly, but only the first insertion was done under a local anaesthetic - after that it was a general, which I was glad of because I didn't have to be awake for the x-rays down afterward to check positioning - i hated the x-rays the most at the time, because it was hard and tiring to sit upright and painful to lie flat on my back. But remembering back, it is the insertion of the central venous line that makes me feel crawly and teary. It didn't hurt. Two men came up from Intensive Care to insert it. One held my arm down, taking my hand as if to reassure me but really pulling my arm down to give a good angle in my collarbones, I guess. The other numbed the skin and pushed the line in. I couldn't see it. I had to have my head turned away so as to give him room. I hate not being able to see what's being done to me. It was uncomfortable, and there was a grnding sensation - as if the needle were rubbing against the underside of my collarbone. Then he removed the needle, leaving the line in place, and stitched the port to my skin to hold it in place. I was shocked, once, to see a surgeon casually stitch a drape to the skin of the patient he was working on so as to prevent it getting in the way - but then I remembered the ports being stitched down to my own skin. A central line can have several ports, so you don't need to have a seperate IV for medication - blessedly, they can sometimes also take blood through it, instead of from a vein in your arm. But the tubes coming out are heavy, so a couple of stitches on each side stops it from pulling. And then I went back to my room. Not so bad. The nurse showed it to me when she took it out a week later in preparation for having the new one put in - it didn't look very thick, but it was long - long enough to run all the way to my heart. I noted the length of the tube and the traces of blood with mild interest, looking forward to the few hours of unconsciousness offered by the promised general anaesthetic.
But sometimes, still - even ten and a half years later - the memory of that grinding sensation, deep under my collarbone and in the top of my ribcage, will spring upon me from nowhere. And I am, suddenly, weak and tearful and clutching the steering wheel for the reassurance of feeling strength in my hands. |
posted by Ata @ 10:59 pm  |
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| 1 Comments: |
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Ugh. *shudders* I am not sure I could cope with that. I suppose when you're in that situation, you just put up with whatever you have to in order to get well, but I'd probably have thrown up, passed out, gone pathetically weak... and no way in hell would I want to watch something like that being done to me.
Poor Ata.
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Ugh. *shudders* I am not sure I could cope with that. I suppose when you're in that situation, you just put up with whatever you have to in order to get well, but I'd probably have thrown up, passed out, gone pathetically weak... and no way in hell would I want to watch something like that being done to me.
Poor Ata.