© 2006 by Curt Miller
The Daily bLog
I'm learning to appreciate subtlety.
My second round of plasmapheresis today didn't go as smoothly as yesterday's. The apheresis unit switches the team around to different patients each day and today's nurse was Jane. A polite, shy, 30-something from the Phillipines, she went about the job of inserting the catheter in my hand for the daily blood-drawing for the pre-apheresis blood count. An hour later, she returned to tell me she needed to draw another sample because the first one coagulated before they tech could count my cells. Shit. Another hour to wait. An hour and fifteen minutes went by before she returned (with a very unhappy look on her face) to inform me that yet another sample would need to be drawn from yet another hole in my other wrist. because the second sample clotted, too.
Patience is not my virtue. After a few moments of tense negotiations, I did agree to do it one more time, with the admonition that this was it for the day. Well, they poked another hole and inserted another catheter and drew another vial of blood. Twenty minutes after settling into my third hour of waiting, Jane came in to announce that she had spoken with Dr. Dunn and, feeling sorry for me, he agreed to get the apheresis going. Well, the fun had just begun.
Jane very smoothly inserted the catheters in my arms and got me all hooked up. A couple of minutes after lift-off, though, the machine started to make a dinging noise, signalling that all was not going well. At 60ml per minute, my vein was collapsing from the suction. Switch the tubes from one arm to the other. Smooth sailing...for 60 seconds. Same result. I think we did this once more before everything started to flow smoothly. After a while, in fact, we were able to get up to 80ml per minute. All proceeded smoothly until the finish at about 1:20pm.
Exhausted.
I made the photo above on my way home at the state line lookout on Route 20. I'm standing in Massachusetts on the Taconic ridge and the Lebanon valley sprawls behind me.
Sleep.
