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| I know this is so passe and last year, but I had to make one |
I had to make this when I got home from my Rituxan infusion today, it was nice to have an oncology nurse that had actually heard about Wegener's and knew my rhuematologist.
On the other hand, this had been around a while so when she expressed some puzzlement over what was going on with my veins and IV that it had to make me laugh.
For once I had a relatively easy IV placement. She went in through the side of my arm just below my wrist, she got the catheter in on the first try and it seemed that the vein was going to take the entire catheter rather than just the very tippy end of the catheter like it usually does. Then when she checked the IV with saline it started to burn a little. I didn't think anything of it, except that sometimes the saline burns. When she put the steroid in the IV it really started to hurt so I asked her to check it again to make sure that the IV hadn't infiltrated. She un-bandaged the IV and everything looked okay so she decided to put more saline through it.
At this time, for some reason, I feel like I am about ready to pass out. Everything has gone down to a pinpoint, I'm starting to get a little sweaty, and shaky feeling. Not something that has ever happened to me when I've had other IV's (which has happened often enough I should know how I normally react) placed.
The nurse looks up from the IV site and says, "I've never seen one do that before." I was expecting a lump or some other signs of infiltration but she said there was nothing like that, but every time she would depress the plunger on the saline my entire arm from my wrist to my elbow would blanch.
We ended up backing the IV out a bit and everything worked better after that. We're not sure why it happened, but it's always interesting when you can show long time oncology nurses things that they've never seen before.
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