My First Week Home with TPN

Living with a PICC line is everything you would imagine it to be...overwhelming. A lot of supplies are delivered to your house (A LOT), a machine is delivered, the TPN and the vitamins too, information about TPN delivery is explained, nurse visits are explained, phlebotomist visits are explained, how to hook up the TPN is shown to you, and then there's the PICC line itself. 

...it's mind boggling. 

Hooking up the TPN takes roughly ten minutes or so. You need to make sure that you have all of the supplies you need because the very first step is washing your hands with special soap. If you touch anything other than your TPN/PICC supplies, you have to wash again. One night, I had to wash THREE times! Many times I get hot and tired half way through the set up process and either have to sit down or have to ask my mom to take over.  

Sleeping with a two foot tube snaking out of your arm is not easy either. The TPN bag and pump reside in a backpack on the floor beside my bed. I then put the excess tubing on top of my comforter so that I am "free" to turn on to my right side. Even when I am asleep I am thinking about the tubing, trying not to yank it out. We don't want that to happen!

I'm hooked up to TPN for 12 hours straight, so if I hook up at 5:30pm I disconnect at 5:30am. I've put off hooking up until 6:30pm or later so that I can get a little (hopefully) get a little more sleep. 

TPN is NO joke. It's not something you mess with, hope for. But when it's necessary, it's necessary. Unfortunately, for me, it has become necessary and I hope that it helps me. I hope that it helps any person on it.