Since mid-July, my left arm has experienced some vein hardening and has generally been taking it easy while my right arm is used for chemo. With two cycles (four treatments) left, my oncologist brought up the possibility of a chemotherapy port, a surgically implanted device that stays in place under the skin for about a year. We also discussed a PICC line, inserted in the upper arm and removable right after treatment wraps up,
Now that I have only one more treatment to go (knock on wood), I think my veins are going to hold out! There’s always a lot of fretting about my tiny veins, but so far, the nurses always manage to always get the IV.
I know it’s good to be knowledgeable about your treatment and be and advocate of yourself, but most of my questions are just kind of silly, born of curiosity. Mainly, why can’t the guy with the cool phlebotomy glasses administer IVs when veins are hard to find? They’re these magic glasses that allow the wearer somehow to see inside your arm, beyond the superficial tiny veins at the top. He told me I had a big fat vein in the crook of my arm, right behind those tiny ones. But I assume there’s some good reason, and as long as the little veins are holding up, I’m too lazy to ask.
However, on Friday, my boyfriend finally asked a question that had been plaguing him for weeks. “Why do you have to use only the arms for IVs?” he asked. He followed this with, “Junkies shoot up in their eyeballs and in between their toes, so I just wondered.”
Now I know that he wasn’t suggesting they administer chemo through my eyeballs or in between my toes, and I’ve also wondered why the arms are preferred for IVs. I probably wouldn’t have posed my question quite that way, pitting medical expertise against viewings of Trainspotting, The Wire and The Panic in Needle Park.
My doctor very patiently addressed the question, though, and in case you were wondering, it’s just not a good idea, for a variety of reasons. It’s unsanitary, for one. Plus, the veins in other areas, like your legs, just aren’t quite as available as you think. The feet are usually far away from where you want the medicine to go. In other places on your body, the IVs might slip out, and with caustic chemo drugs, you really don’t want that.
Sometimes, she said, when it’s an emergency life-or-death situation, they’ll put an IV in the neck. But she succinctly summed up her talk on IVs in places other than the arm with, “We just wouldn’t do that.”