After all the poking of needles my veins began to get weak. I was getting blood drawn sometimes once or twice a week, the usual though would be more like 2x a month. Once about 2 weeks after chemo and of course while I was in the hospital I would have it done once if not more.
Because of the abuse my veins were taking, not to mention the toxin running through them monthly they began to weaken and build up scar tissue.
For instance, I have (or had) awesome veins in my elbow pit. What is the elbow pit you may ask. haha. well Nate calls where your elbow bends and elbow pit, where you knee bend- knee pit, I guess the arm pit would technically be a shoulder pit? the first time I heard him call a knee pit a knee pit I about died laughing. What the? but now it is common vocabulary in our household.
ok now that it is explained, I HAD pretty awesome viens in my elbow pit. That was good, because I could get my arms switched off, and each arm has a couple good viens. so although they may still be poking in the same bruise- totally different vein. The would always look at my arms with great big sparkly eyes...so many choices! haha.
After a while the scar tissue builds up on the viens and it gets harder to get blood out, it makes it SO much more painful when they draw blood. The veins become weak-often collapsing and blowing up. Not fun, mainly cause they have to poke me all over again.
This happened all the time, it was not umcommon for me to have to get poked twice while trying to get blood drawn. OR or have 2-3 IV's during a chemo treatment. I became accustomed to it, I hated it, but it had to be done.
My arm would always be so sore too. the more treatments the more sore. After a while I used a brace. That would keep my arm from moving and moving the IV, and I would wrap my arm in warm towels or blankets. ahh. we all know how nice it is to pull out a fresh clean blanket out of the dryer and just snuggle- smelling the detergents. wouldn't that be nice to have those always at hand- "nurse, maid, butler, hot smelly blanket please" haha. Well although it was nice- they didnt smell that nice. more like a warewolf- if I Was a vampire that is.
ok so on with the experience. Like I said it is not uncommon for me to have 2-3+ IV's. sometimes it was that they would put one in my left hand, the vein would blow...they would go up a little past my wrist. blow or collapse, go a little further up. If that arm was done they would switch arms. You get the point. Sometimes though, I would have the IV in for a couple of hours and the nurse would come in and notice something was wrong with the fluid levels, check the IV and what do you know...it blew. so here we go again! It was really bad, I mean my dad, who is a Nurse Anesthetist and can do any IV because of profession, would always talk about putting in a more permanent one, like a PICC, so all they had to do is hook me up to that when I went down. (poor Jolyn, Krissy and Jenni, I remember complaining to you all the time about that...you probably remember, me showing off my bruises and whining...I'm so sorry!)
On this one occasion I was just arriving and they were getting the IV started. It seemed like it was starting late, because we had already seen and talked to the doctor. The nurse tried 3x to get an IV in. Keep in mind- the needle they use is "the BIGGEST one, so they can pump the fluid though you fast." I don't know what guage they actually used, but that is what the nurse told me word for word once. It was a male nurse too. why do I remember that?
Back to the story, The nurse tried about 3x. She called in another nurse on the floor who had a good rep at getting IV's. She tried twice, after the first one she said "If I don't get this one we are going to call in the IV team." There is an IV team? really? ok. 1/2 hour later the IV team finally arrived. They tried a few times to get it, no luck. By this time I was a mess. on the outside I was holding it together ok, just the type of crying where it is tears running down your cheeks- no sobbing like a child, although I wanted to- maybe throw in the three year old fit with it too. When they couldn't get it they called in life flight. LiFE FLighT? who knew. They did come in and got it on the first time, but they did it differently than the others- what they did is go into my elbow pit. They took a big hOnkin needle, said it was going to hurT and pushed down really hard and really deep, past the muscles into my deep vein. OOWWweeEIIEEe! Did you hit the bone? could have sworn I heard it crack.
so after about 7-8 IV attempts I was finally hooked up to be detoxified.
oh joy.
