I'm exhausted, so this won't be as coherent as I'd like, but I'll do my best.
The insertion yesterday was painless, though really bloody, but in an awesome way. Then again, I love horror movies and gore, so to someone else the experience might be really harrowing.
My mom and two of my sisters came and watched the insertion. One of my sisters had to leave the room at some point because when it was over and the woman was cleaning the blood off of me, there were huge clots of it hanging off my arm. It looked like pieces of liver. AWESOME. My sister was only out of the room briefly though, and had taken a bunch of pictures of the procedure, at my request. I haven't seen them yet, but depending on how nasty they are, I may post them.
I had expected to get the line in my left (non-dominant) arm, but got it in my right instead. Supposedly there are less problems in the right arm. I'd also expected it to be above my elbow, but it's more like in the crook of it because that's where the vein was juciest. Having it in my right arm is kind of a pain in the butt, but I expect I'll get used to it pretty quickly.
After the insertion, I got my first infusion of Rifampin. It went well. No die-off reaction yet. Today I went back to the doctor's office to get my dressing changed -- they put on a pressure dressing for the first 24 hours. Then I got my first infusion of Zithromax. Since it takes about 90 minutes, I started it at the office and then went home after they saw I wasn't having a bad reaction to it. Since I've been on oral Zithromax in the past, they didn't insist on keeping me for the whole infusion.
Once I'm done infusing, I have to flush my line with saline, which is so weird because I can actually taste it. Then I flush with Heparin to make sure there's no clotting happening. And that's it.
I had wanted to write a much more detailed entry about this whole experience, but my brain is too mushy for that today. In fact, if this entry makes much sense at all, I'll consider it a success.
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