Have you ever wondered how kids (or anyone) receive so much medication and blood products IV without totally destroying their veins? The answer is some sort of central ‘line’ or catheter is placed. Central means that it is in a large vein near the heart as opposed to a peripheral vein such as in the arm or hand. For the majority of our kids, we have the surgeons place a port-a-cath that is tunneled under the skin and snakes its way through a big vein and it ends right above the heart. The access reservoir (purple thing in pictures) is somewhere underneath the skin on the chest wall and can be felt. Our fabulous nurses then access the port with a needle and hook them up.
The needle can stay in place for up to a week before it needs to be changed. The great thing is that they are durable and don’t “blow” like a peripheral vein. This means we can give multiple medications simultaneously through them. We can also draw blood from them. When the chemotherapy is done, then the needle is removed and they can play and bathe normally. The bad thing about them (and all central lines) is that they are made of plastic and bacteria LOVE to grow on plastic especially if you don’t have a great immune system from receiving chemotherapy. Thus, fevers are always an emergency when you have a line like this in place. They really work great and reduce the number of needle pokes kids have to get. When they are in remission, then another surgery is done to remove the line. These lines are handy for what we need them for, but everything is relative and it’s crazy that this is a very “minor” surgery for most of our kids. My kids are crazy tough.
