Visit ER, The Last Resort. Mini-Vacation Spot in Danville.

The ER trip last night was çuz my IV bled and I couldn't reach the nurse or the doc and the paperwork says tell them if it bleeds.  My big fear was contamination between the wet dressing on the iv site and the rest of me. This line runs into my upper arm, snakes around inside there for a while and terminates, dumping liquid antibiotic too caustic to go into a small vein, into the superior vena cava which feeds the heart. The idea of an infection getting started there was enough to get me moving, length of trip notwithstanding. 

It is  notable only because I  had to drive 1&1/2 hours to get there. First I went to the IV department--where they had put the picc line in (same hospital, different department), but they couldn't do anything there since they had no doctor's order. So they sent me to the ER. 

 ER didn't know what to do with me as it wasn't really an emergency. After I had waited about 2 hours in an ER room the ER doc called the IV department to come down and look at it. Not immediately, you understand, just sometime. So I waited and listened to them treat two injured kids down the hall and admired the art on the wall in my room.

At one point an exhausted doctor came into my room, plopped down in the other chair, sighed and asked --are you the patient? She wasn't actually there to treat me, just to rest a while. We chatted and laughed and she left, forgetting her stethoscope. I stole it, of course. 

Eventually an IV team showed up, discussed the whole situation with ER, and agreed as how, okay, if ER would chart it as an ER treatment, IV would do the work.

They made sure the line still functioned, cleaned up the umm, fluid from the leak, changed the dressing and sent me home. A good time was had by all, except that I had to make the hour and a half trip back home in the dark and I can't see sh*t after dark. 

The rest of the story:  This morning my home health nurse called to say  she had an order to pull the picc line. That's med-speak for remove the whole kit and caboodle. 

Of course I called the doctor to make sure he gave the order before I agreed to let her take it out. 

If I had known that last night I could have just stayed at home. 

So, sometime today, this nurse, who btw, is supposed to be on call for me, who never mentioned the desperate message I left her last night before leaving for the hospital, who spends all her time when she is here talking about her atrial fib and patients she has treated--more on this later, maybe--this Clara Barton in grubby jeans, will be here and remove my picc line. If her heart doesn't   ''act up'" again. My quotes won't make.