A New Midline For Me

February 28, 2024, at home

PHOTO: My new midline with dressing was installed today.

I just arrived home from the Emergency Room at Delray Medical Center after being driven to and from there by my wonderful wife. I went to the hospital due to a perceived leakage in my PICC line, which ultimately turned out to be a shorter midline.

I am in the midst of a six-week-long daily regimen of intravenous antibiotics infusions three times per day that started at the hospital on February 9, 2024, and continuing when I arrived at home eight days later. I entered the hospital on the February 9 with shortness of breath, and osteomyelitis (a bone infection) in my right, fractured ankle and cellulitis (infection under the skin) in the surrounding area. At that time, doctors discovered that I have a six-inch-long, hair-thin wire embedded in a blood vessel between my heart and one of my lungs, but that's a different story. It is either a broken part of a previous PICC line or guide wire for a PICC line.

Anyway, because my midline was unable to receive blood extractions, the doctor thought it best to have it replaced in the same location (my upper right arm) during an hour-long, sporadically painful procedure.

The mystery was solved. My midline wasn't actually leaking. Because my midline is within a very small vein in my chest, and my antibiotic infusions were being administered too quickly, the liquid antibiotics backed up and came back out of my arm. The obvious cure is to administer my antibiotics slowly.

Anyway, I'm good to go with two antibiotics infusions every morning with my home nurse and one infusion every evening with my wife.