On leaving hospital on Tuesday Sal was given an appointment card detailing when her Hickman Line fitting would be done. She was told tomorrow, Friday.
This morning we received a call from the hospital at 9:20 saying they were expecting her in this morning and she had to get to the hospital by 10:30 or it would have to be cancelled! Sal was still in bed! Sal was now in a difficult position... try to get to the hospital in time or not have the line fitted for potentially another 2 weeks. Bearing in mind that Sal was still quite weak it was doubtful that she could get there in time. She had to have a bit of breakfast and we then jumped in the car. We actually arrived at 10:30!
Sal was put in a bed in the same ward she was in earlier this week and she relaxed, or tried to. She was offered a welcome cuppa while she waited. The nurse then sprung a bombshell... she will be sedated and should have been "nil by mouth" this morning. Oh! She went off to find out if they could do the procedure with her having had breakfast. She returned with the news that they will proceed. Great.
I then left Sal and went off to try to find a diversion while Sal was having her line fitted. The next I heard was at 2pm when she was back in the ward.
I will write a separate post on the procedure itself after I have it clear from Sal as to what happened so I won't speak about that right now. However, I can say that when I arrived at the hospital Sal was bright, cheerful and feeling very well and delighted that the line was in.
A couple of hours monitoring, a check of bloods and she could go home. The blood was taken via the line (Yeeesss!) and we waited. Sal had some tea and we waited. Eventually the dinner trolley came round and we were still waiting. Several calls to the nurse to see what the delay was produced nothing. At 7pm we were needing to get a decision... was Sal OK to go or not. The nurse called the blood test centre only to be told that they had done one test (potassium) but they had lost the rest of her blood for the other tests! Crickey! So, the nurse took yest more blood (via the line) and as the potassium was fine we could go. So 6 hours after her procedure we were given the OK to leave. We were not impressed.
So all done.
From here on the procedure went very smoothly indeed.
