After my first weekend at home from the hospital, I had a Pleurx catheter inserted into my lung cavity, which is a semi-permanent version of the chest tube I had while in the hospital.

For some background, the lymphoma caused swelling of the lymph nodes around my lungs and trachea, eventually leading to the huge buildup of fluid I had (and the major shortness of breath I was experiencing). The expectation is that with the cancer being treated, the lymph nodes will eventually settle down and the fluid will stop building up. In the meantime, I have to drain the tube regularly at home.

A nurse came by the house to drain the tube and teach my husband and I to do so ourselves as well. I’m also meant to have granix subcutaneous shots administered for 7 days after each treatment and my husband is the lucky guy who gets to do it for me (because no way am I gonna do it myself 😬). So, the nurse also walked though tips and made sure he felt comfortable to do so.

He’s been doing a stellar job with both the shots and the draining. When I went back to have the sutures removed from the pleurx insertion site, the pulmonologist said the dressings were “beautifully done”.

For my first post-hospital chemo treatment, I was lucky to get a private room. We had the tv on and got to play along to Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Deal or No Deal episodes the whole time. Chemo is administered in a couple different ways, but for me it’s administered via a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter). It’s a catheter that is inserted on my arm and is threaded through the vein into a larger vein in the chest, near my heart). It, like my pleurx, is mean to be semi-permanent and it provides long-term vein access through my treatments.

The second treatment was in the main room with the other patients - not as private and no tv but it went smoothly and I got a nap in.

For the treatment I just had, we were lucky enough to get a private room again. Getting started took some time though as we ran into some issues with my PICC line. It wasn’t returning blood on a flush which indicated there was likely a bit of a clot around the line. Their usual tricks of some exercise of the arm, taking a little walk, coughing while they tried to draw and moving my head every which way didn’t work so they eventually had to add some medication to break down the clot and it eventually worked.

It requires some upkeep - I’m unable to get it wet so I have to wear a fancy plastic sleeve when I shower. Also, since the end of the line goes right to my heart, it’s super important I keep the area very clean. As such, I have to have the dressing on it changed weekly.

I’m very much a homebody who enjoys their routine of being a couch potato and not having outside things to do. I work from home and get most things delivered so before all this, I didn’t leave the house very often. Getting into a new routine of having important appointments every week has been a bit of a challenge, but I think its good for me.