Mepilex

Here is a picture of my mepilex dressing. Much more comfortable than the gauze pads secured to my arm with a roll of gauze - the entire thing would slowly slip down my arm over the course of the day until the insertion site was almost uncovered. While I still do itch, it is much better than before, and my skin looks a lot less irritated. The site under the PICC is slowly drying and scabbing, which is wonderful. Infectious disease suggested trying to get a thin strip of gauze under the PICC if possible. I did manage this yesterday. It really helps minimize skin irritation, which is really really necessary for the skin to heal. The gauze, however, seems to get stuck to both the skin and the PICC line since the skin is still draining a bit. Had to work pretty hard to get it off tonight. Might wait a few more days to try that again just because it is tricky to pull the gauze off the PICC when you are trying not to pull the PICC and stitches out of your arm.

Overall, a great big improvement over anything we have tried up until now. And most importantly, I won't spend my birthday itching like crazy!

I didn't want to get all of my in the picture, but I couldn't get a good shot of the dressing itself, and then I tried cropping the whole image to just my arm which ended up making that a big skin coloured blurry image.