My new best friend


To picc or not to picc that is the question?

A picc line for those who don’t know is a small tube that is inserted into a vein in your arm and fed up through the vein up to your shoulder and then down near your heart. It’s for administering chemo through and taking bloods and it stays in for your chemo journey.

You have a choice to have one in or have cannulas put in at every visit for chemo. Both not ideal but my decision was made easy. Id seen my son Sam (who had kidney cancer when he was 4) have a picc line that we affectionately called ‘Tom’. Children are given them to make the process a lot easier and also so they aren’t jabbed with needles at every appointment. I’m about as brave as a kid when it comes to needles so I put my hand up for this straight away.

Plus having seen my sister Becky go through cancer a lot of time without one and them struggling to find veins, this cemented my love for the picc line. And as if by magic and to reaffirm my decision the nurses had tried to get blood out of me 4 times last week and actually gave up! Stupidly I’d jumped out of bed and turned up dehydrated and had no food which makes your veins hide away and I’m going for that reason. The other reason could be old age but I’m not having that!

I’m resisting the urge to name mine like the kids do but part of me thinks I could run a competition to name my picc. Winner gets a bottle of wine.....my phone will start pinging within minutes of this going live. knowing my friends with that incentive! 

Piccs aren’t easy to live with so I know by the end of this I will be wanting it out ASAP. Trying to keep my son Sam at the age of 4 from pulling the protective dressing off it and bathing him without getting it wet was quite stressful as I remember. My main concerns for me were how will I wash my hair without getting it wet,but soon remembered i wouldn’t have any hair to wash soon, and will I be able to get in my mums hot tub (first world problem I know).

So here I am post picc line insertion, smug because I was a brave soldier having it put in and it’s another tick, another thing done on this journey. Chemo starts tomorrow. Bring it on, I’m ready!


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