PICC
I'm on a PICC line. PICC stands for Perhipheral Something Something Catheter. It's basically an IV tube that goes into my inner bicep at about the spot where I'd have a tattoo saying "MOM," if I had a tattoo saying "MOM." Only, instead of stopping there, it runs--inside me--on up into my chest cavity. The only evidence I have of it running up there are word of mouth, a few diagrams, and a murky X-Ray a technician was kind enough to show me. I don't feel anything in there, though, sometimes, going to bed at night, I get the illusion that I can feel it there, resting inside me.
The only overt evidence that the PICC line is anything other than a regular IV are the little black sutures holding it in place. It took me a while to look at those without squirming, but eventually these sentimentalities dimininish.
The initial installation of the PICC line was far more frightening than painful. Preparation involved a special table, a special armrest, several applications of a special sterile gel, several varieties of special cloth swathing my arm, special machines to monitor my chest and guide the line in...I doubt that an Inca, sacrificed to his sun god, was opened up with much more pomp and ritual. The procedure itself, though, was pure anticlimax. A little pinprick of novacaine, a few odd sensations, and the thing was done, sealed under a little clear plastic window like a particularly flat and dreary shoebox diorama.
It was the PICC line that fed me the week of Cladribine, and that fed me my four antibiotics and an an antifungal (now reduced to two antibiotics and a diferent antifungal) during my fever week. And every day at 5 am(no one seems to know why that choice of hour is necessary), a nurse comes by and reverses the flow, drawing blood straight from my heart into her test tubes for another round at the lab. I'll probably go home with the PICC line still in me, against the probability of further transfusions and blood draws in the weeks to come. I'll have to learn to flush it out with saline twice a day, but I've been watching the procedure so long that it almost feels like I already know how. A PICC line, well maintained and uninfected, can remain in place for up to two months.