Allergic Reaction to PICC Line Wing Guard

Things have been trucking along just fine for the last two months or so here in Hyperemesis Land. Not great, but sooo much better than I was the first few months, when I thought I would die and actually kind of looked forward to the relief death would bring. When I had my PICC line inserted on July 7, my world went from black and gray back to having some colors again, and I stopped feeling like death was immediate.

Then the last few days, I kind of wanted to cut off my right arm. There were no classic signs of infection: no fever, no [unusual] nausea, no dizziness, no swelling, no oozing, no malaise. But my arm was itching like crazy! And every time I closed my eyes and put my finger where the itching was, my hand landed on the wing guard that actually holds the line into my arm.

Yesterday when my nurse pulled off the wing guard during my dressing change, skin came with it and we could see immediately that no, it wasn’t my imagination. The whole area under where the wing guard had been was covered in weeping blisters that itched so much that I almost cried because I couldn’t scratch them. Can you say “breeding ground for infection only centimeters from the PICC insertion site”? Can you say “Kristen and the nurse almost had heart attacks”?

There was nowhere to attach a new wing guard because the skin was so degraded, so she scrubbed it all with alcohol and just put the PICC dressing, a flimsy piece of adhesive plastic, directly over it and then taped the lumens where they come out from under to keep them stable. I tried not to move much while she called the hospital’s radiology department to arrange an emergency visit for someone to evaluate what to do.

We bounced back and forth between the hospital radiologists and the next-to-the-hospital radiologists before determining that I would go to the actual hospital and camp out until they had time to look at it. If possible, they would stitch the line into my arm so I wouldn’t need a wing guard anymore.

When the mid-level looked at my arm (after hours of waiting), she cringed. She literally cringed, and it looked like it hurt her more than it hurt me. “We can stitch it,” she said, “or we can pull it out and put it somewhere else. How would you feel about that?”

I would feel great about that, I told her. So that’s what we decided to do, but it meant hours more of waiting since I didn’t have an appointment and wasn’t on death’s doorstep like some of the other patients I saw being wheeled through to the procedure room. I tried to focus on my gratitude for not being as sick as the other patients instead of my annoyance at waiting for so long. Gratitude, and bad television, were great diversions from the itching that made me feel like I was about to lose my mind and gouge my arm.

When they wheeled me back, I was ecstatic. Even more so when I reached the procedure room and realized that they were playing Sirius Radio’s Sixties on 6 station and everyone, including me, was singing along. I’ve never had such a jolly medical procedure in all my life.

Except it hurt like the dickens. The first PICC insertion was literally painless. I was sore later, but it didn’t hurt at all for the actual insertion. This time more than made up for it, and I am sporting a massive bruise at the insertion site. It looks like someone hit my arm with a bat and then stuck the PICC in.

Once the new line was in, they pulled the old line and reconnected all of my tubes and pumps. Boom, done. It was about 10 minutes start to finish, including my taking pictures at the end. I debated whether to post them, but they’re pretty gross so I’ll share them on request only.

The happy news is that now I have a brandy-brand-new PICC line that is purple and not surrounded by potential infection. The unhappy news is that now both of my arms hurt and my right arm itches so much that it actually woke me up several times last night. The only relief comes from scrubbing it with alcohol pads, which make it burn but feel soooooo good. Here’s hoping that clears up soon, before I have to dig it out with my fingernails.

The old PICC insertion site looks just fine, like a small puncture of course but nothing exciting. They said it will be completely closed in a couple of days and just keep a Band-Aid on it. Works for me!

Now, back to icing my left arm and not scratching my right. Here’s hoping the next “excitement” in this pregnancy comes when I deliver two healthy babies…

Any PICC line horror stories? Leave a comment!