My appointment came through to have my PICC line inserted on Thursday 5th December, the day before my Chemo was due to start, they told me it would take about and hour and a quarter.

I had no idea what to expect from this procedure and chose not to look anything up on the internet before I went. Up until this recent cancer diagnosis I have always been a bit squeamish and am known amongst my friends for being a bit of a wimp where all things medical are concerned.

I almost feinted when Max bumped his chin in reception and they tried to glue it in A&E. I was leaning over him trying to console him and as he cried the gash in his chin just wobbled at me! I felt a rush of heat come up my body from my feet but thankfully by fanning myself with the consent form I managed to avert an embarrassing feint.

A few years ago, I decided to make myself give blood firstly because it’s an important thing to do and secondly to try and harden myself up. It worked on both counts but wasn’t a smooth process. I think I managed 9 donations (before the cancer diagnosis) and I feinted twice. But with perseverance and a few changes to what I did on the day, I got there in the end. Sadly, my blood giving career has been cut short but this bloody cancer.

Anyway, back to the PICC line. Basically, a PICC line is a peripherally inserted central catheter. It is inserted into a peripheral vein your arm (around about the elbow) and threaded up through the vein, across your chest and downwards to sit in a central location in a larger vein closer to the heart.

I knew things were serious when I walked into the room and there was a bed set out and a piece of machinery next to it and there were two nurses present. After signing the consent form, I had to take off my top so my right arm was free of any clothes. They said they wanted to put it into my dominant arm and I didn’t protest as neither arm is a ‘good arm’ for me anymore.

Once I was lay on the bed there was around 15 minutes of preparation. The assistant nurse completely covered all of my body with brand new sterile sheets and covered all the wires of the equipment. The nurses doing the procedure had to scrub up and get her gown and hat on then I think all the relevant tools and kit were opened from brand new sterile packages and laid out behind her.

I had absolutely no idea how she was going to manage to shove it up the arm and move it where it needed to go and having seen her do it, it seemed like a highly skilled procedure. Firstly, she used an ultrasound to look at the size of my veins and find one of a good size. Unfortunately for me none of them were huge which meant she couldn’t put anaesthetic in immediately before she started as this makes the vein even smaller. So, she started by inserting the PICC into my vein first and once it was in, she administered some anaesthetic so that she could advance up the arm. This bit didn’t hurt it just stung a little as the anaesthetic went in.

She then started to try and ‘advance’ up the vein which I could literally feel as a sort of tugging sensation in my vein – it wasn’t painful but just weird. With her first attempt she just couldn’t move up the vein and she kept saying ‘I’m in and it’s bleeding beautifully but I just can’t advance’. My first thought was what a wonderful oxymoron ‘bleeding beautifully’ was. Although I sill had no idea what she meant by it.

In the end she had to take it out and try again and second time round she managed to advance upwards. As I had a block thing sat on my chest it was showing her an image on her monitor but not like an x-ray it just looked like a grey line. Then when the PICC came into view on the screen (as a lollipop shape) she just needed to guide it down the grey path on the screen. The problem was it kept wanting to go up towards my neck and not down towards my heart. After I turned my head in a certain direction and took a few deep breaths she had it in the right place on the screen.

The end of the procedure entailed measuring the amount of line left outside my body and checking that two wires (that had been used to advance the PICC) had been taken out of my body.

There seemed to be quite a lot of blood being mopped up with gauze but as I didn’t really look during the procedure, I’m presuming that was the evidence of the vein ‘bleeding beautifully’.

It took about 45 minutes all up and I have to say it didn’t really hurt at all, it’s just a weird sensation. I also must take my hat off to the nurse who performed it. It seemed like a very skilled procedure and one she was very good at. She was also very kind to me during the whole time I was there, chatting away and putting me at ease (very different to the ECG girl).

She put a large piece of gauze on the area and dressed it and sent me home. She told me to wrap it in cling film if I wanted a shower the next morning, which of course I did.

I think I’ll be investing in a proper waterproof cover otherwise my cling film bills are going to go through the roof!

So that’s the preparation done.

I have the tools to administer the chemo and a heart that can take it.

All I have to do now is turn up and let them fill me with poison.