Recap IV

On Friday I was slated for Hickman line insertion, a more routine little surgery in which a tube is inserted into a big vein, snaked under my skin and allowed to exit in a more accessible anatomical location. In this way, twenty-four hours access is provided direct to my right jugular, through a couple of ports in my shoulder. Convenient! Downstairs to interventional radiology, a quick jab of lidocaine and a scrub down, and we were all set. Twenty minutes later I was coming around from my natural non-drug-induced (honestly) nap, and that was that; everything *seemed* to have gone in just fine.

Back upstairs, then, and... pretty much nothing, actually. The line was left to settle in, so I continued getting my fluids through the original drip line in my right arm, and I was left to spend the day reading The Gathering, this year's rather dreary Booker prizewinner. Maybe something interesting will happen on Saturday?

Or maybe that's a bad wish to make, in a hospital? Saturday morning, and it's time to put the line through its paces. It should be trivial, in theory, to extract blood from the line. Not so, in practice; apparently my line featured a kink, which necessitated all sorts of gymnastics and breathing exercises and coughing and stretching and waving my arms and maybe stretching again *just a little more* before the merest drop of blood would issue. Hardly ideal. Putting stuff in, though, was another matter; the sales pitch was spot-on in regards how easily I could now be hooked up with not one but two simultaneous infusions or transfusions or injections or *anything*. The wonders of modern technology.

The day's other wonder of modern technology, and a far more welcome one in my little one-room world of a book and a radio and a played-through video game, was a visit from the internet fairy. While I was fighting the Hickman line for enough blood for my tests, dad was braving the city centre in search of a 3G modem; fortune favoured, so by about two o'clock he and mum came up with a laptop and a connection to the outside world. To my credit, it only took until about four o'clock for me to resurface from email and IM for long enough to thank them.

Puncturing my reunion with the internet, literally, was a dose of a aspariginase, the fourth and final prong of my chemotherapy regime. Puncturing me in the hips, in fact; this one was administered intramuscularly to, I presume, spite me for being so happy with the Hickman line's promise of needle pricks no more. Side effects to watch out for: allergic reaction, treatable with antihistamine. Boring.

Laptop, internet, no allergic rashes, assurances granted by the University that my place will be available come September, back in contact with friends. A good day.