On Friday, my sister-in-law and I had a nice lunch with Eric while my wife was getting this behemoth shoved into her brachiocephalic vein.
Forget those wimpy IV lines you may have seen in the past. This is called a "Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter" (pronounced: "ouch") The skinny end of this beast was hanging out in the right atrium of my wife's heart! She said she could feel the end flopping around when she was laying on one side. I'm not sure if that's possible or not, but either way, the mere thought freaks me out just a little bit.
I spent a lot of time in mechanical awe as I watched a tower crane get assembled from the ground up over the weekend. I guess KU Medical Center is adding a few floors to the heart center. After a few vertical sections were in place by a Link Belt 348 crawler crane, the crew started assembling the tower crane's cab.
It didn't take long for the whole thing to go up after that.
The view from my wife's room was interesting, in that I got to look out over the cooling towers and chimneys and across State Line into Midtown.
And as we were preparing to leave the hospital, I got to watch hard-hat-wearing acrobats set up pulleys for the main cable.
As for my wife, the procedure got us some good news and some bad news. The initial problem the doctors were trying to diagnose isn't as big of a deal as originally expected. That means something else is wrong. There's a lot to be thankful for, but a lot of unanswered questions.
My wife is coming home from the hospital today as well. She's been in since last Wednesday. She's coming home with her PICC line still in. It looks exactly like the one in your picture. I'm heading off to the hospital now. I'll get trained on how to do the daily flushing of the PICC before she gets discharged.
ReplyDeleteShe says she can feel the end of her PICC line in her chest when she breathes in deeply.
Hope all's well with your wife, Doug. It's not uncommon for a PICC to stay in for a month or even longer. They make the administration of IV medication easy enough for us normal folks to do. I absolutely hate needles and things like that. I don't think I'd let anyone put one of those in me!
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