how does it all work?

A few friends have been asking about how Carys gets the chemo treatment, so I thought I'd give a quick explanation in case others are curious, but thought it might be a bit weird to ask. Before the treatment started, Carys had a central line inserted. In her case, she has a double lumen Hickman line. The line gets inserted surgically under a general anaesthetic. The surgeon tunnels under the skin in her chest to insert the line up to her neck, where it is then inserted into a vein and down that vein to the main artery that is connected to her heart. The line into the main artery is necessary because the chemo drugs are too strong to be administered into little arm veins. The line remains in place for the duration of the treatment, so each week, we need to go to the hospital for line care and dressing change. The dressing around the tube that comes out of her chest gets changed and cleaned. Carys is not a big fan of that as it's like a big band-aid being pulled off each time, and a cold, strong smelling wipe around the chest. She gets braver each time, and there are not so many tears now. The comfort clinician has special chocolate scented bubbles to distract her with! Then the tubes get flushed with saline and a drug called heprin, so that the inside of the tubes don't get blood clots. The ends of the tubes have these smart little valves that can be accessed by syringes, so they can attach them to drips which is how she gets the drugs into her body. They can also draw blood from the line for testing, but they don't tend to do that unless they have to access the line for something else, as each time they access the line, there is a risk of infection. So most of her blood tests are done by a fingerprick and squeeze to take a little bit in a vial. So that's how it all works!