There is a fair amount of vomiting, so read at your own peril.
I got sick a couple of days before Thanksgiving. I figured it was just the flu -- fever of 102, puking my guts out -- you know, the usual. After a day or so, I started to feel better, and ridiculous as I am, I thought that was the end of it.
A week went by.
And then my nurse came to do the weekly dressing change on my PICC line.
This is my PICC line.
It is a 36cm long tube that goes through my veins, right to my heart.
As soon as she left, I hopped in my car and started driving to a friend's house to go grocery shopping. You know, looking at that photo, I really need Michelle Obama to come do something about my arms. Anyway, by the time I was at my friend's house, I finally understood what "wracked with chills" meant. I was shaking so hard that I could hardly walk, and my teeth were chattering so much I couldn't really talk. I decided to go to the hospital. I thought my PICC line must have been infected. Even I couldn't get the flu two weeks in a row, right?
Well, I turned around and drove myself to the ER (there's a really gross story I could insert here about the need for Stop and Shop to make sturdier bags, but there are some things that should just remain private). I showed up, starting to burn up with a fever, covered in my own vomit and mildly incoherent (in retrospect, I should have gotten a ride, I KNOW...). I was triaged and promptly put in a wheelchair, swaddled in hot blankets, and rather inexplicably, wheeled out to the waiting room.
There was a three hundred and forty seven year old man at the greeter's desk. I'm pretty sure it's where the Walmart greeters retire to, because they get to sit down the whole time. The rest of the waiting room was completely empty (as, in truth, was the ER). Just me and the greeter, who was rapidly turning into an old oak tree. And the triage nurse parked me directly behind him.
A few minutes or a lifetime pass....
Now I need some puking receptacle. Badly. I try to get up, but I'm madly tangled in all of the blankets. I try wheeling a little, but the blankets are now twisted around the spokes of the wheel chair. So, I try to get the greeter's attention. "Sir?".... "SIR?".... "EXCUSE MEEEEE".... nothing. I should have made a note of his gigantic hearing aids before this happened... But sometimes Nature prevails. Not wanting to be prevailing on myself anymore than I already had, I looked around desperately for help. And found it. In the tiny sign that said RESTROOM. I flung myself out of the wheelchair on to the floor, drug myself around the corner into the restroom -- thinking the whole time about all of the exposés about the nastiness found on the bottom of purses -- and did some intense praying to the god of all things round and porcelain. And pulled the emergency rip cord. It seemed like the thing to do. And I lay on the floor of the hospital bathroom with the emergency alarm going off.
And no one came.
A few minutes or a lifetime pass...
And now there are crazed voices at the door (that I of course locked, because I'm not that kind of girl!), trying to get in, threatening to break it down, yelling at each other about why someone who was clearly in distress was left to wait alone in the waiting room. I reached up, pulled down the door handle, we all looked at each other, and I don't remember anything much that happened after that.
It must have been hours later.
I was in a private room in the ER, and the doctor came running in, all out of breath, looked at me and said, "I'm going to remove your PICC line", but in this way where she could have been saying, "I must away from this castle to slay the mighty mighty dragon that plagues us, and is now spitting fire on all of our peasant folk". In short, she was bravely mildly hysterical.
It's a tube, so the coming out of it is much easier than the going in. You just pull the adhesive stat lock (white thing with the arrows on it in the picture) off of my arm, and then continuously pull the PICC line out. Pretty simple. And mostly painless. It just feels weird. I can feel where it is in my body as it's being pulled out.
So, she screams out the door for a nurse to come with the sterile kit (the end of the PICC line is cut off and sent away to be cultured in case some bacterica or something else is growing on it). And with a wild look in her eye, she squares her feet with her body, grabs the PICC line, and RIPS it out of my body. I have this image of her holding the PICC line over her head, like she had just slain the giant serpent, and I would now be saved.
A few minutes or a lifetime pass...
Some stranger is in my room telling me that he's going to commit me (in retrospect, I'm pretty sure he said admit, but that isn't how I remember it). And I started screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO".
I have no idea what happened next.
And then I was in a room upstairs in the actual hospital. The admitting nurse said I had an FUO, like I was supposed to know what that means. A fever of unknown origin.
And so it began....
