Sam,
Wow! Sorry you had such trouble with the pain killer. No lasting cardo effects I hope. Is your nerve for swallowing functioning yet? What is a port? How about the nerves to your hand, have they gotten any better? Why didn't they put a G-Tube in your stomach instead of doing TPN? TPN has risk associated with it that G-tube feeding doesn't. Feeding pumps are portable. They attach to you like a back pack. At night, you can attach them to an IV pole if needed and plug it into the wall. The battery recharges at the sametime you are using the feeding pump during the night. My son was on J-tube feeds for a year, then when his stomach started working again, we switched to G-tube feeds. From there, we used the G-tube for venting purposes. He got his G-tube out when he was fifteen or sixteen.
I will have the first dressing change Thursday. I eneded up taking some generic form of Vicodine. The PICC site is still painful so I'm taking 600mg's of Ibuprofin now. I stopped taking the Vicodine. My doc said she will leave the PICC line in until it absolutely must come out.
The techs who put the PICC line in said I rated up there as one of the hardest to get in. The line kept wanting to go into my neck. I thought for sure they would have to stand on their heads to get it in. They said they would have stood on their heads if that was what it took to get the PICC line in. LOL!
My doc said she will test out two different pain killers in her office and see if they work or not. She is documenting in my chart that the lidocane does nothing for me. The techs also injected Lidocane into my skin and that didn't work well either. Spotty at best. The techs said I had rough skin. The phlabotomist at my docs office said the same thing. I wonder why I have rough skin? I know I'm lacking muscles due to having had muscle atrophy.
How long does it take the PICC site to heal and stop hurting? I think I'm going to skip physical therapy until the site is either healed or less painful.
Were you told what kinds of things you could not do with the arm that had the PICC line in it?
Thanks. Gentle hugs.
I hope you have a low pain day.
Blessings,
Naturelover