Painful IV Flush...

Last night, just like every night, I sat on the couch while Jim prepared the saline flushes and drip for my IV. He knelt on the ground and attached the saline to my IV line and preceded to flush the line. He got about .5ml of saline into my arm before my reflexes kicked in and I yanked my arm back and kicked at him in pain. Jim's face went white as I started laughing uncontrollably at the shock of the pain and my reaction. Jim was still unsure of what had happened at this point so I gathered my control and told him that the flush hurt like mad, something was wrong with the IV. Though I have had this problem in the past, when the IV is a few days old, injecting stuff into it starts to sting, but nothing like what I felt last night, and the IV wasn't even 24 hours old.

Naturally, Jim and I though maybe it was just a fluke, so he tried to inject more saline, same thing, it hurt like mad. At this point we looked at my arm and the skin above the IV insertion point had a long red line, I can only assume that the vein had become swollen causing that irritation. So we called Joe, my awesome nurse and told him the situation, as Jim was talking to Joe, the inner side of my arm as well as my thumb and pointer finger went tingly, and then numb. Joe told Jim to sit tight and he'd come out after a couple of his patients.

My arm felt like it had something extremely heaving dropped on it, the pain did not ease at all. Joe showing up and looked at my arm and became rather puzzled. He saw the redness and came to the assumption that the IV must have torn out the side of my vein and the pain was from the saline being flush directly onto my muscle and nerves. The numbness may have been caused from my nerves going into shock from the saline solution.

Joe is an amazingly intelligent person and stated that he didn't even want to mess with that IV and just took it out and inserted a new one. I love Joe, so does Jim, he's so cool!

Anyway, today my arm still hurts pretty bad where the old IV was but the "good, not so good" news is that I won't have to deal with getting a new IV every 4 days anymore. I went to the doctor yesterday and I have lost more weight. I have dropped 15 pounds since getting pregnant and have not been able to get back up to my original weight, nor gain any weight at all.

I was honestly shocked when I stepped on the scale yesterday. I thought that I would've gained enough weight to be off the IV's.

However, now my doctor is getting more serious as this issue is becoming more and more serious. I am going to have a PICC line placed to see if injecting the medications directly to my heart will help me gain weight. Cross your fingers, If not, I have no idea what the next step is. Wish me luck!