Gloves?

On Thursday, my mom had a Hickman catheter put in her to use for taking blood and getting her chemotherapy. Well, just to let you know, the catheter is basically a central line that goes directly into her jugular vein in the her neck. Yeah - you read it correctly. There is a thing stuck directly into that MAJOR vein. Then, the "thing" is run down her neck and comes out of her skin high on her chest. Here is a picture of it for better understanding.

Well, obviously this is a picture from the internet and not a picture of my mom's chest.

Anyway, today was the first day that we had to change the dressing around it. After kind of panicing inside (because I realized that there is most likely some blood involved), I doned my mask, washed and sanatized by hands, and took a deep breath. We both actually had to wear masks to do it. So, I pulled the sticky plastic thing off her skin that covered the entire catheder. At the same time, I kept making sure she was holding onto the line because I was freaking out that if I pulled to hard, it would dislodge the line and there would be a HOLE in her jugular! Yeah - that would be a quick return trip to the hospital.

After pulling it off, my mom took a peek under the dressing to check how bad it was and it really wasn't that bad at all. We pulled the dressing off - then I used this super cool invention. It was like one of those dish washing things that I sqeezed and alcohol came out on a sponge for me to wash around the area. I know that was stinging because it was alcohol going onto a hole in the skin :(

I washed it all up, then we put another type of prep on the outside where we were going to replace the sticky plastic thing. We did not have to replace the dressing because it was no longer "weeping", which is a really gross word. We sealed the hole all up in the sticky plastic and we pretty proud of our work.

At about the same time, I looked down to start cleaning up all of the materials and saw the gloves that were sealed in a bag - probably the gloves that I was supposed to use the do that entire procedure! I even remember thinking the entire time that it just did not seem like I should be touching all that stuff. I mean - we were wearing freaking MASKS for crying out loud and there I am touching the dressing and sealing it up in my BARE hands. So - at least my hands were washed and sanitized -- but I can be sure that I will NEVER forget to wear the gloves again!