Dad flew over again so he took me this time back to hospital for my blood transfusion and hickman line removal. We got there quite early in order to give ourselves time to have the blood transfusion and leave before the rush hour kicked in. The bloods take a couple of hours per bag so it's a lengthy process. I picked a bed in the day care unit, so called as it is used for day treatment, but it still has all the beds like a proper ward. It feels very much more relaxed on the day care unit than on ward, so once my bag was plugged into the hckman line I nodded off for a while.

By the time the first bag had gone through I was begining to already feel more energised, and yet there was more comming. When you have a low red cell count you feel quite exhausted and fatigued, not in the same way you'd feel after have little sleep. It's a more physical tiredness and your whole body feels it . The only solution is a blood transfusion, and when you get it, you feel like a different person. The difference is more noticable when you're out of hospital at home doing pretty much normal things like walking up the stairs or just getting up off a chair, because in hospital you tend to lie in bed all day and don't move around.

Whilst all this was happening Dr. Kanfer was kind enough to come and talk to us to discuss the progress and things that had happened over the last month, as we haddn't seen him for

Hickman Line in situ

some time. Following the second bag of blood the time had come for the hickman line to be removed so we waited in anticipation for the doctor to come along. He gave me a number of jabs of local anaesthetic at various points from the entry site of the hickman line along the chest. By this point I was getting really nervous as I had no I idea what to expect, and

Whose Line is it?

the doctor placed his hand over my neck (where the line enters the jugular vein) and gave a firm constant pull on the line and the whole thing slipped out without and pain whatsoever. He had to place a pad over my vein to blood wouldn't spill out into the chest and place another pad on my chest on the exit wound. After a few minutes a sticky pad was placed on the chest to cover the exit wound and that was that.