Central Venous Catheter (coming Monday)

At around 10am on Monday, they'll put me in a Fluoroscope,* a kind of fuzzy-but-live-action X-ray so that they can snake a Central Venous Catheter into me.

This is a cropped photo of what mine will look like, taken from another cancer patient's blog. The key thing to note is that it has 3 heads that dangle out and which I'll need to learn how to clean daily:

They'll clean it for me every day I'm donating (Jan 8 & 9) .  They'll use on port for "blood out to the extraction machine" another for "blood return after extraction" and then the 3rd is a spare for tests out or medicine in.

Personally, I wish they'd have it come out the back of my skull, 'cause then it'd kinda look like a pony tail made from three fat hairs.

Once donating is done and I'm not going to BIDMC every day, I'll have to rinse it with saline and somehow add heparin (an anti-coagulant) when I'm home with it Jan 10 to 14.  My guess is that I'll do this from syringes that will "dock" Usually it is a process of:

1. uncap catheter, wipe with alcohol
2. uncap syringe, wipe with alcohol
3. screw or dock syringe onto end of catheter
4. push plunger to force the saline into the line
5. maybe pull on plunger to check for "blood return" (confirming 2-way flow)
6. undock syringe
7. wipe & recap catheter dock with a fresh cap
8. dispose of syringe, wipes, and old caps

The BIDMC takes over and uses it for chemo Jan 15, 16, 17, & 18, and then I'm not sure if they'll leave it in (for tests, drugs and transfusions) or maybe they'll take it out as an infection risk.


*Check out the fluoroscope, below.  I'm pretty sure it has a "lightning storm" setting which allows you to animate the monster through metal electrodes on either side of his neck, and then you tip the table up once he's alive. Going to clip two 10mm bolts to my shirt collar and see how it goes.

Public Domain photo from Wikimedia Commons