New PICC Line Bandage

May 27, 2024, at home

This morning, my home nurse arrived to change the dressing on my PICC line. One end of the line enters a vein in my neck and goes down near my heart. The other end exits my chest with two ports.

I had been receiving intravenous infusions of two different antibiotics at the hospital and at home for a bone infection in my right ankle, but I decided to stop about three weeks ago due to breathing difficulties.

I recently had a blood extraction for testing at my primary doctor's office. My podiatrist, working with my infectious-disease doctor, will contact my primary doctor this week to see if I require further blood extraction for testing.

I recently had a blood infection, which was gone the last time it was recently checked. If my blood infection has returned, I will require yet another six-week-long regimen of daily intravenous antibiotic infusions. If my blood infection is still gone, my podiatrist wants me to have another blood extraction for testing in about a month.

On April 20, 2024, my podiatrist performed surgery on my right ankle: a bone biopsy, a deburring, and a draining of fluid. My right ankle is less swollen and sore than it was.

I will just mention that during my recent visit to the hospital for a week or so, the doctors had much trouble, and I had much pain, due to many difficulties installing PICC lines, midlines, and regular IV lines in my arms. Scar tissue within my veins from many past PICC lines made my veins collapse when the doctors tried to install the lines. That is why my current line is in my neck.

I have had a line in my neck twice before: in 2022, during and after my quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery, and months before that when I was on daily dialysis for six weeks for kidney failure (both kidneys) due to a bad reaction to a previous six-week-long regimen of daily intravenous antibiotics. I have had many of these regimens in recent years due to bone, skin, and blood infections caused by diabetic ulcers in both of my feet.