Day 20 – My Healing Journey

Six days before the treatment, I started taking the steroid.  I had high hopes that it would help alleviate some of the weakness I was experiencing in my legs. 

Instead, it made the situation much worse and I could hardly walk.  My sister came to pick me up and helped me get into the car.  We arrived at the clinic but it was very busy that morning so we had to wait.

You have to be assigned a nurse who will be the one to start your IV and prepare your infusion meds. They had been having a hard time getting into any veins in my arms so they decided that they needed to put it in my hand much to my disappointment.  The nurse announced she would be getting the best nurse for hand IV’s.

The “best” nurse walks in, announces herself and begins to sing her own praises at her abilities for people with temperamental veins and she announces her name is Crystal. She then tells me not to forget her name because she is the go to person and the best there is.

Well, let me just tell you, I will NEVER forget her name because she hit a bloodvessel in my hand causing it to be black and blue and she hit a nerve in my hand so I could not clench a fist for over a month because it hurts so bad. Oh I will remember her name all right, but it will not be in a good way.

It took a very long time to get into my chair in the infusion room because they were completely full.  Once I got into my chair, it took quite awhile before the nurse ever came over to bring my infusions. 

The way that Crystal had placed the IV in my hand made it very difficult to move because I could feel the needle pinching.  Every time I tried to move my hand, the machine started beeping. Thankfully, with my sister being a nurse,  she knew what to do so she took care of it because my nurse was nowhere to be found.

By this time, I was cursing Crystal and wishing I had never met her. It took an hour longer than normal for my infusion because the machine kept beeping and my sister had to keep resetting it. 

We didn’t actually get to watch a movie on this visit, there was a man in his 80’s across from us who really wanted to talk so my sister and I chatted with him the whole time. He had a port in his chest for his infusions, thankfully I only had to have the IV.  

I always took my own snacks, nuts, cheese and filtered water so I shared my nuts with him while we chatted. He was very nice man with quite the story about his life, I was truly amazed at his outlook on life, he gave me a very special gift that day and he didn’t even know it.