All the lovely things...

Now for the pictures of all the lovely things that I needed to take care of my now deceased PICC line.

This is me in the mask I wore for every dressing change. My nurse had to wear one too.

These are the masks before being warn, all flat and what not. The box said that different colours are available, but my box only had green...

 

       The sterile towel that everything needed for a dressing change would be placed on. This thing was huge!

The sterile towel itself, only partially unfolded.

Below is the Statlock used to secure the PICC line to me arm. The nurse always had a lot of trouble getting it of, and more than once pulled off a bit of skin. on the left is the Statlock in its sterile package. On the right it is unwrapped, and the little package was the skin prep which, I think, was meant to make it less sticky and to protect the skin.

This is the Chloraprep used to clean my arm every week. At first I had ones with red curves on the packaging. They contained alcohol which stung badly, so we switch to these with the back curve - non-alcoholic.

Above are picture of the tegaderm dressing that would cover the PICC line at all times. It wasn't allowed to get wet at all... kinda hard when it is really hot and you start to sweat. The white strip around the whole thing comes off after it is out on your arm, and the strips at the side came off to secure the actual tubing to your arm.

Below is the tubing, which was changed every three days. At one point they accidentally ordered me the wrong size tubing. The nurse thought it would be o.k. but I woke up at 6:50 am to the alarm of the IV pump. Because the tubing was bigger and took more to prime (meaning getting a vacuum/all the air out of it before connecting it the the PICC line, and technically me) the 500ml bag of antibiotics I got everyday wouldn't last the 24 hours it needed to. Thankfully the nurse had extra smaller tubing in he car, and by the next tubing change day I had been given the right stuff.

It was very long, which was great when I was sitting on my bed and wanted to hope over to the bookcase in my room, but when I went out it had a life of it's own. It would sneak out of the bag and I would find it randomly trailing on the ground behind me. I gave up after a while and just held onto the excess, playing with it.

The connecter piece which connected my PICC  to the tubing. This often got stuck and we had to use pliers to get it off occasionally...

Gauze padding, used to wrap around the connecter piece/end of my PICC so that they would be more comfortable against my skin, and less affected by the tape holding the tube to my arm.

Alcohol swabs used to clean the connecter piece every time I got a new IV bag (aka every morning, and in between the saline flushes. Basically, disconnect tubing and swab, flush first saline syringe and swab, flush second saline syringe and swab, reconnect tubing, and swab).

Saline syringes to flush the line. This was supposed to be done everyday, but one nurse refused. We eventually just started doing it ourselves along with everything except the dressing changes. BTW my lovely mom did everything for me! It is kind of hard to do for yourself.  I had to laugh so hard when I saw that the plastic wrap around each syringe had instruction in Dutch as well as English and several other languages, since I am from the Netherlands.

Alost everything needed for one tubing change and one dressing change. There should be a few more saline syringes, sterile gloves, and regular gloves. I think that's about it. Oh wait, the actual medication itself. And my badger of course! To bad I am not a Hufflepuff.

I should note, that the actual items shown here were not used. I photographed all this after my PICC line was taken out. If I actually still needed all this stuff I would only have taken pictures of unopened packages.

Peripherally Inserted Central Catheters

Thankfully my PICC line was taken out about two weeks ago, and I will hopefully never have to go through the experience that came with it again. However, I still have several large boxes of supplies left in my kitchen. I can't really do anything with them as I don't need them anymore. Yay! But I still wanted to blog about PICC lines for anyone reading this who is at the start of this journey. So here I go. 

I am not so great at explaining what a PICC line is, so I will link you below to the Wikipedia PICC line page:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripherally_inserted_central_catheter
But I can tell you about my experience here, and I can show all the 'lovely' things needed to take care of it in the following post.

These are picture os my PICC line shortly after I got home from the hospital. As you can tell, it bleed. It continued to bleed for several weeks, which is completly normal, as well as oozing some odd looking gunky stuff.

I got my PICC line while in my hospital bed in the orthopedic ward the day after surgery. That's right, you don't even have to get out of bed or migrate to another part of the hospital is you were inpatient like me. Two specially trained nurses came in (right at lunch time may I add) and created what they called a sterile field. Basically, they put on protective sterile gowns, masks, gloves, hairnets, shoe covers, etc, and covered all of me except my head and my right arm in sterile blankets. The sterilness of the procedure even extended to the man bringing lunch - he wasn't, as the nurse said, allowed to contaminate her sterile field, so he has to squeeze through the door and walk on the other side of the room to give the other patients their lunches... don't know how that was sterile, but what ever floated their boat. everything needed was laid out on the bed side table, and one of the nurses estimated how long the PICC line needed to be (BTW, their estimate was right one!). The nurses used an ultrasound machine to find a good vein in my upper right arm - in my case the basilic vein, and then, while keeping the ultrasound in place, made a very small incision and placed a guide wire into the vein. Then my arm was numbed with lidocaine. Usually your skin is numbed first. I don't know why mine wasn't. A nurse inserted the actual PICC line and began threading it (to me. I know, that sounds gruesome). When they expect it is getting up to your neck they ask you if you hear anything funny. if you do the line went the wrong way, up your neck. At this stage they can still fix this. Mine did not, and moments later all 36cm of it were inside of me. The dressing was put on, and it was good to go as soon as an x ray was taken to make sure the tip of the line was in the right place. BTW, the x ray was taken with a portable machine - I got to stay in bed again. What awesome service is this!

The PICC line was very strange at first. It took a while to stop hurting, but After a few weeks I was even able to sleep on my right side. the only really difficult part was keeping the IV tubing and the bag of my IV pump from tangling with my crutches. Dressing changes were a bag of surprises. The first few went terribly with me almost fainting, although that could have been due to how the Tazocin made me feel, but the last few went well. The feeling when the tegaderm dressing comes off is amazing, and you almost beg the nurse to keep swabbing your arm with the chlora-prep swabs. Showering was also difficult, especially for me with both my right arm and leg not being allowed to get wet. My mom was amazing and washed my hair for me as often as my little heart desired.

My biggest problem with the PICC was actually the IV pump because I got several batteries which would not hold a charge, so for a while it was always a hit and a miss going out, and worrying about the pump shutting off on its own. I also had trouble with the chlora-prep in the last weeks or so, and I constantly had trouble with the PICC dressings and statlocks peeling off skin. Although the PICC line has been out for 16 days, the skin which was covered by the tegaderm dressing, etc. is still really sensitive and the actul place the line went into my arm is still healing.

Oh, and in case anyone want to know, I had a power-injectable PICC, and a CADD Solis Pump, which my nurses told me was worth 15 000$.

Moody

I'm not in a good mood. It's a crumby kind of day and everything feels kind of off. You know those days, when nothing you do makes you comfortable, when you can't sit down to concentrate on anything for more then five minutes. My father is here today 'cause he wants to fix the house up a bit now that the divorce proceedings between him and my mom are imminent, so until he leaves I have locked myself in my room with a mountain of school work and my guinea pigs.

Have a mentioned before how terribly far behind I am on all my school work? I was so exhausted in December that I missed all my exams. I had to write them, plus a few essays at the start of the second semester in January, which pushed me really far behind on all my readings and assignments for second semester. By the time I had finished the first semester work it was February and we (my doctors and I) got to the point where we knew surgery could not be avoided. I did my best to hand in some assignments but didn't get nearly enough done. By the end of  March I gave up, exhausted and ever more anxious for the looming surgery. After surgery the 8 weeks of IV antibiotics hit me like a stem roller and I was completely flattened. Only now, two weeks after the IV antibiotics were stopped, have I turned my mind to anything school related (well, except for Latin, which I have been reviewing every few days. Yay! for being a Latin nerd). Now I have four exams and four 8-10 pages essays to write. In order to do anything I first have to get caught up on all the readings, which, may I add, is a shit load of reading. Sigh. I need to email the registers office to sort something out. There is an option were they would give me until December to finish all last semesters work. I am considering this as my best option, and would then only take three new courses next semester. For the foreseeable future I will be on a tone of oral antibiotics and they make me exhausted. I want to take an easy year to get back to normal. Besides, we don't even know yet if my bone infection is gone or not.

Once more I am waiting for scan results, which doesn't  help anything either. I could see the screen with the pictures taken by the gamma camera while the scan was going. Lying there I tried to figure out what the pictures meant, but the effort just made my brain hurt as it ambled through all the possibilities. I will leave reading the images to the professionals and wait until July 12 for my next appointment to find out the results.

As I mentioned earlier, I am exhausted. I have headaches from the antibiotics every day - apparently Cephalexin is notorious for making people feel like death... go figure how I feel after a year. Plus I am on more of it then ever before. My leg hurts. I have had some bone pain which I like to think (and hope) comes from bone healing. Part of my shin is still numb from surgery. The area around it tingles a lot which is really irritating. this strange sensation feels like mildly warm water running over you skin, but kind of from the inside out. This is something I might feel for the rest of my life.  And one spot on the incision continues to leak fluid. Yesterday what looked like puss came out of it. And just in case you don't think it is TMI, my stomach hates me. I wake up everyday around 5:00am and feel like my stomach is trying to eat itself, and then I get terrible cramps but nothing happens. Really unpleasant.

A Very Radio Active Me (well, on Thursday anyways)

Almost two weeks ago I had an appointment with my infectious disease specialist. The really exciting news of the day was that my PICC line came out, which I had not been expecting at all (I'm not complaining though!). Some of the more routine news was that my doctor was going to schedule my next set of scans. We all agreed that it is to soon after surgery for an MRI or CT scan since the bone needs time to fill itself in, so we decided on a Bone Scan instead. A bone scan is a really cool thing. Basically, you are injected with radio active material (no, not enough to give you super powers), and put through a scan, and then asked to come back several hours later for a repeat scan, and in my case the next day as well, to see if there are clusters of the radio active material around the area (e.g. the limb) in question. The radio active material clusters around infections, so on a computer screen, attached to the scan thingy, you can see all the white dots (radio active stuff) moving throughout you. The really cool part (at least in my opinion) is that the radio active material is absorbed in your bones (hence the name 'bone scan'), and will pinpoint if/where something is going on.

The doctors at the hospital schedule all of the appointments for their patients, so the whole thing is 99% fool proof. No way a patient has to worry about booking thing or remembering to call that number, etc. You are supposed to get a letter with the date, location, and time, with any instruction about your procedure/appointment/scan/etc. from the hospital through the mail. However, that doesn't always work. Last summer I missed my first appointment with a new orthopedic surgeon because 1) either the hospital never sent the letter (they didn't call either) or 2) said letter got lost during the postal strike (just like my new bank card). Then in October (I think) my surgeon wanted to order a ultrasound guided needle aspiration to see if he could culture the fluid collecting in my shin. We heard nothing about this until several weeks after my latest surgery (April 18th), almost 6 months after I had last seen that surgeon. My mom polity told the lady calling from the hospital that we would not be at the hospital (2 days later) for the procedure as I was seeing a different surgeon and had already had surgery. The scary part is that for that procedure you have to stop certain medication at least a week prior to the day of. I wasn't on any of those medications, but I have a friend who is. It is frustrating (and I think negligent) that you can be called out of the blue and told that you have a medical procedure in 48 hours that you knew nothing about. So back to my bone scan. I never received the letter telling me when the appointment was scheduled for. Just yesterday my mom and I commented to one another that we should call my ID specialist. Low and behold, today we get a call from the hospital. The lady on the phone says that my bone scan, scheduled for nest week Thursday and Friday has to be rescheduled, until, drum roll please, this Thursday and Friday! once again, my mom told the lady politely that we had received no letter at all. If the hospital had not called, we would never have known about the missed bone scan until the next visit with ID on July 12. No don't get me wrong anything. I am extremely pleased with the care I have been getting, but something has to change with this "we will send you a letter" thing. How long will it be before I, or any other patient, actually misses an important appointment/procedure/scan/etc. because letters were accidentally not mailed out. I understand that mistakes happen, but this should be kept at a minimal. Sick people are stressed and feeling icky as is.

Bone pain.

Bone pain tonight. Hoping it is just the bone regrowing in the places it was taken out during surgery. Slightly doubtful as surgery was almost ten weeks ago, but I won't know until the next set of scans.

Just thought you all should know...

that in an unforeseen turn of events, my PICC line was pulled out today at my appointment with infectious disease! NO more IVs and dressing changes for me! And a good thing too... on Tuesday I had an allergic reaction to the chloraprep and today it looked like the start of infection. 8 weeks was long enough. I'm still on a bunch of oral antibiotics, but that I can live with.

I still feel terrible, but I hope that I will start to feel better now that I am not longer on the IV Tazocin!

Tazo-Don't

Now that I have vented a bit I should update a little. My leg is doing well. A good amount of the swelling has gone away. There is still some but not as bad as it was (thankfully because being able to feel my skin slowly stretch is a truly disgusting experience). There is still enough that I will discuss it with my infectious disease specialist at my next appointment. There is some concern that after so much damage/many surgeries there is circulation damage. The spots that had opened up a few weeks ago at the peek of swelling are healing. For a while they were leaking tea coloured fluid which is concerning, exp. given that I have also been experiencing some of my pre surgery pain. A good chunk of my right shin has not regained feeling. This was expected as this was the third incision made in the same spot. Also, given that, in order close the incision, the old scar had to be cut away, the skin is fairly tight and my shin is really bumpy. I hope that this gets better as I move farther and farther from surgery. The muscles are still extremely tight. I think that I almost have full range of motion in my ankle, but I can feel the muscles moving/flexing over my shin. Going down stairs is still pretty uncomfortable.This is probably because while in surgery the muscles had to be moved out of the way. Amazing that eight weeks later I am still feeling the side effects of that.

The antibiotics have not been going very well. I have had at least one headache everyday for the last week, often more. The IV Tazocin makes me very dizzy and nauseous. I often just end up laying in bed for a hours at a time. It seems to be the worst at night, esp. because I have been experiencing really bad insomnia. Because I am often so nauseous I haven't been eating a lot. Between last night 11pm and today 7pm today (that's 20hours) I ate about 6 small chocolate flavored cracker things and that was it. There was no inclination to eat. None at all. Just past 7pm I did eat a small bite of lasagna and a small bowl of chips, but I am really not interested in food. Take last night for example, my brother brought me a bowl of Ringos, but just the smell of them made me want to vomit. I have pretty much have zero stamina. Everything is such an effort these days. I don't want to sound dramatic, but I feel even worse than I did last spring right before I was diagnosed, which is really saying something because last spring I was a zombie. The antibiotics have some sort of cumulative effect. The longer you take them, esp. without missing a dose, the better they are supposed to work. However, the antibiotics can "just stop working" after a while. I have been on the oral Septra since last August so who know at this point. I won't have any answers until my next scans are done. My stomach has been on the fritz again, but I know that telling you this is making people scream "TMI! TMI," so I won't go further into that.

FYI -Tazocin is a strong antibiotics used for serious infections. It also has some really serious side effects. The chances of getting one of those serious side effects increases the longer you are on it. From what I have been told, most people take Tazocin for 2-3 weeks. I am at 8 weeks and feel like crap, so I am at the point where I want off this drug. I also just learned that one of the main ingredients Piperacillin decreases the effectiveness of Doxycycline, the oral antibiotic I was on right after surgery, so I am very happy to be back on the Septra. As for the Tazocin, I want off that ****.

Blah Blah Blah... I am fed up.

I have been feeling very blah the last few days. I think I have finally hit my "wall". You know, that point where you just don't want to continue anymore, and even if you manage to continue it's only because others drag you through it. Of course I am being dramatic, typical of me when I am in a bitchy mood, but I have a right to have had enough. I have a right to say no more. It is so easy for everyone to encourage me and tell me how well I am doing, but that gets old fast. I don't want to be strong. I don't want to smile through the rough patches while I wait for better days. I definitely do not want to push myself so that I feel accomplished, because doing so will take up all of my energy. I want to do what people are supposed to do when they are sick. To sleep a ridiculously insane amount, to not feel the need to look good in public, to not have to set priorities and please people. If I can lounge around the house I will be perfectly content. Basically, I want to be sick.

Wait.

Don't get me wrong. I know what you are thinking but it is not what I mean. I do not actually want to be sick. Nobody does. But since I am and have been for such a very long time, I want to be able to be sick without feeling guilty for all the things in my life that I am missing. I already feel shitty because I am ill, why should I guilty for being ill, feel even worse because I can't meet people's expectations? Why do people find the concept of being ill so hard to understand? If you are healthy you are well and able to everything as usual - no big deal, but if you are sick people expect you to be strong and still do the things healthy people do. In first year sociology, way back when in Fall 2010 I learned about the "sick role". I don't want to be the person to fulfill that role, to be that member of society, but I don't want to act as if I am healthy either. I want to be free to have my good days when I feel up to getting out of the house, and then have my down days where I can crash at home without worrying what other people think.

Today, at clinic for my PICC dressing change, all I wanted to do was stop. Just to stop treatment and say F*uck this, I will take my chances with the osteomyelitis. Everything started o.k. The nurse (Victoria) got the old dressing off and everything ready, sterile field an all. We donned our masks and we began. Usually the chloraprep swabs create a wonderful sensation as they rub the skin that is trapped under the tegaderm dressing (aka the I can't get to it if it itches barrier). This was much needed since the insertion site has been oozing gunk (perfectly normal) the whole week. Most usually comes off with the dressing, but today some chunky stuff needed a little bit of extra prodding. The chloraprep felt great for a few minutes. I even told the nurse that, and that I could sit there all day with her swabbing my arm. But it soon began to itch, and then then itch began to hurt just a smidgin, and then that slightly hurting itch became a painful OMFG this is an insane kind off torturish itch. And I couldn't do anything. Nothing at all. We were still waiting for the chloraprep to dry before finishing so the nurse started to flush the line. Every week we need to check for blood return. Last week we got none. We didn't get any today either. The nurse sat there, trying her best but it just made everything hurt more. But the nurse had to keep trying because they need blood return. We couldn't use the Heparin available because it can cause problems with the Tazocin. The Heparin prevents blood clots and the Tazocin can make bleeding hard to stop so you can imagine the emergency if they interact with one another.  After a few minutes Victoria gave up (rule of thumb for PICC lines = if it hurts, stop.).  I was left sitting there, almost in tears, begging Victoria to pull the line out. I was completely ready to be done with IVs, to take my chances with the osteomylitis if I still have it. But of course Victoria (wonderful and funny as she is) can't pull the line as she obviously needs a doctor's permission to do that. So we returned our attention to my every increasing itch. She tried using Iodine swabs, which worked for all of five second, and then the itch got even worse. I know have a Mepilex dressing over my PICC line. It's not great because it's not see through, but we couldn't take the risk of me being allergic to the tegaderm. Victoria said if the itching stay the same or gets worse to come back the next day. After a few hours it did finally die down, but the itch is still there.

And I just want this all to be over. I think I need to have a good long discussion with my infectious disease specialist when I see her next.

Achy Bones

Last night I experienced some pretty intense bone pain. Bone pain has been a constant companion for the last few years as my bone infection went untreated (more like undiagnosed...). Several years ago my family doctor waved it off as "growing pains", which is ridicules because I haven't grown since 8th grade. It was really severe by the time my latest surgery rolled around in April. Since surgery I hadn't felt any at all until about a week ago, when I had a few small twinges here and there early this week. I shrugged it off, thinking I might have imagined it since the pain lasted only minutes, but last night it was terrible. The pain started around 1:00am, and was still going strong when I finally fell asleep around 4:00am. It is the type of pain that make you lie in bed, unable to move, clenching your teeth. It's pretty insane that the bone pain in my right lower leg can make my whole body feel so badly. I hoped that I would never experience it again, but alas... I hope it is not a sign.

I shall add it to the list of things I need to talk to my ID specialist at my appointment next week.

Feeling ill (again or still?)

I do not feel well today. My stomach is going crazy. I feel feint. My head hurts on and off. Never extremely painfully but it never really leaves either. And on top of all that I am nauseous.

The tape which secures the end of my PICC line to my arm so that the end doesn't flop around and get caught on things had such strong adhesive that it pulled of skin. The PICC line itself has been causing me a great deal of irritation. It started to itch extremely badly after the dressing change yesterday morning. Last night it was difficult to sleep because the insertion site hurt/stung like crazy, and this morning it was bright red. Oh, and there is something that looks a lot like pus coming out of it.

To add to everything, my leg hurts. I wish I knew for sure if the infection is gone. My next scans should be in a 3 or 4 weeks. Infectious disease will schedule them at my next appointment on June 14th. Together, not knowing and waiting are difficult.

I am not a happy camper today. One my friends wants to plan a camping trip for the end of summer, so sometime in August. A bunch of us did this after high school graduation a few years ago and it was a huge success. He said he hopes I can come, but I doubt it. If all goes well my line will be pulled July 17th. Two weeks after that I see my surgeon for followup, and then probably mid August I will have another appointment with infectious disease. I will need to stay out of the sun for a while too, as I will probably stay on the oral Septra longer, which makes it extremely easy to burn. The whole summer feels like a write off. No fun for me. It sucks watching your friends move on with their lives while you can't do nearly half the stuff they do. I am jealous. I want to be healthy like them.

Well , the no fun part is not completely true. I will find other fun things to do. It just sucks that things are limited due to the bone infection. And my not feeling well today doesn't help my attitude either. My apologies if this was a stupid useless post to read, but I really needed to rant.

Clinic and feeling crumby

Today has been a slow day. I had to go to clinic this morning (this is something new that I should update about - please give me a sharp nudge if I forget) to get the PICC dressing changed, and to show my proficiency at doing tubing changes, which have to be done every three days. Mom and I passed the test so we got the go ahead to do it at home without a nurse. This is great because it means we only have to go to clinic once a week to get the dressing change done. Today's appointment was pretty early (at least for me) being at 8:50am. The tubing has to be done just before the IV bag is changed every morning, which has to be done before either 1) the IV pump indicates that the bag is empty or 2) 11:00am when the pump starts infusing. Basically, which ever happens first. Because we didn't have the go ahead to do this on our own yet, we had to go to clinic before 10:00am, and just get the PICC dressing done at the same time. But now that we can do the tubing ourselves, we can go to the clinic anytime we like one Tuesdays, even if the tubing happens to need changing that day. For the next five weeks we scheduled an appointment for each Tuesday at 2:00pm.

Compared with the nurse I had last week (my first time at clinic), today's was amazing. From the experiences I have had, the younger nurses are much friendlier and relate-able. The older ones seem to have this matriarchal attitude, and they hate it when people question them or have questions/concerns about anything. But the younger ones I have had have been all around super awesome fantastic.

I have been having terrible headaches and been feeling feint for the last few days. I told today's nurse about this when she asked me how I have been doing. She checked a giant package with all the side effects for all the different IV medications and said I was defiantly having side effects of the Tazocin. She said if they continue or get worse to call the clinic or my infectious disease specialist. Tazocin is not user friendly stuff. There also doesn't seem to be much that can be used in its place, so we are thinking I might just have to tough is out for 5 1/2 more weeks. This sucks. The headaches make it hard to concentrate. The faintness makes it hard to do anything active. And in general I have been to tired to want to do anything. Oh, and don't forget the stomach troubles... but I won't get into those here.

All (and I literally mean all, not most, not many, not some, but all) of the nurses and health care professionals I have meet over the last weeks have been flabbergasted that I am on 12 weeks of IV antibiotics. I suppose there reactions indicate how much of a bitch this infection is to oust. Most people, the nurses tell me, are on IV antibiotics anywhere from 7 days to 6 weeks, but they see very few doing 12 weeks. It gets frustrating hearing this all the time. I don't like to think that I have been sick enough to need all this stuff. I don't like to think about everything that has happened and how uncertain things still are. All that I can really do it be thankfully that I am not one of the people who do this for more than 12 weeks e.g. those on chemo of fighting Lyme disease.

After clinic mum and I drove around a bit. It was a beautiful morning - not cold but with a nice breeze and a weak but slowly growing stronger sun. We drove through on of the nicer cemeteries in the city, enjoying the refreshing smell of freshly cut still wet from the last storm grass. We got home and I promptly fell asleep after getting really excited about what came in the mail (Lego that I ordered last week from Ebay!). Sleep is always a great thing after PICC dressing changes because they always make my arm itch an extraordinary amount. Every week on Tuesday I take a nap and by the time I wake up (3:30pm today... bad, I know, but I am just that tired even after a full nights rest0 the itch is thankfully gone. I had a terrible headache for a couple hours, but now (just after 9:00pm) it has let up somewhat. I think I will try to read a bit before bed, or look at my Latin workbook.

I hope I feel a bit better tomorrow. It would be nice to enjoy the warm weather before it becomes unbearably hot, instead of feeling all crumby. Because of the stuff I am on I burn easily so I can't stay outside long, but I should at least try to sit in a comfy chair under the parasol outside.

A new round of firsts

Even seven weeks post surgery there are still so many "firsts" that I am stumbling (both literally and figuratively) upon. I experience these firsts after every surgery, but they always feel the same - all bright and shiny and new. As much as bone infections and surgeries suck, they make a great way to stay grounded when combined together. There is nothing finer than taking pleasure in life's little things when you have to deal with the ups and downs of chronic illness.

What has sparked me to post this on my blog you ask? My first shower since surgery of course! As loving as my mother was to wash my hair every few days, and as refreshing as sponge baths where (not always so much) taking a shower cannot be topped. Hopefully taking a shower standing up will follow soon after, and then showering without my arm all wrapped up in plastic and elastics to protect my PICC line, and not having to worry about 15 000$ IV pumps getting wet...