Those who know me, know I have health problems spanning 3 decades, over a dozen lots of stomach operations and plenty of “yeah I’ve had that scan” comments
Fewer people will know (cos whilst I don’t hide it I don’t shout to the world), that I have a hickman style central venous line in my chest. In short a plastic tube goes into my chest and then into a big vein which feeds into the heart. I connect a drip to the tube to get fluids in of an evening. Getting an infection in this line is not good. Its possible to die (quite quickly in fact), and whilst I dont know many people with them, the ones I’ve known are all now no longer with us, including my best mate Tim Phillips 9 years ago.
Every year or so for these last few years (Ive been “connected” for about 13 years), I seem to get an infection around Sept, Oct, Nov time and yes, you’ve got it, it’s back again. Say what you like about the NHS, I got a phone call at 20.30 on a Sunday evening from the doc on call on the ward to ask me how I was feeling cos the tests they did last week had come back positive. Ive never had anything but excellent treatment.
Whilst replacing a line is a fairly simple procedure in the whole scheme of things, there are only so many veins they can stick the thing into before they run out of access points, so saving the line is top priority in my eyes
I’m hoping its a weeks worth of intravenous anti-biotics and its back on track for Christmas and the New Year. Can’t sleep tonight, so got the trusty laptop out to keep the blog updated!