Illustration courtesy of CancerBacup

 

1) The central line is inserted here.

2) The line is channelled under your skin and out

     the front, whilst also feeding into your heart.

3) The line comes out here for connection.

Hickman Line

 

I had my Hickman Line fitted on 13th May 2003.

 

A bit painful at the time, but nothing to worry yourself about.

Pain rating 3/10

 

The procedure starts off with a lot of x-rays of the neck before anything happens, and then once a vein has been confirmed as suitable, the line is fitted.

 

At approximately 2.00pm I was given antibiotics prior to going down to get the line fitted. I was wheeled into a proper operating theatre and transferred from my bed to a table. X-rayed and anesthetised they made their incisions and inserted the wire (which precedes the line) and everything was going okay, until they started pushing and shoving in order to get the line in. I am assured that this is quite normal, but can be harder to put in if you have muscles around the area. I didn’t think I had any muscles left, but I must have had as the process became very uncomfortable. Not excessively painful, apart from the odd nip, but uncomfortable sums it up adequately.

Illustration of my used Hickman Line. (Apparently it’s not common to ask for them, but you know me)

 

A bit of the bottom has to be cut off and kept, but it’s not as big as it looks, as the two lumens are on the outside of the skin.

If you look at the 9 inch mark, you will notice the little butterfly that they stitch to your skin, just like the PICC line.

My head was covered with green paper, which was made into a sort of tent, and the radiologist was having a chat with me. After a couple of grimaces, she asked me if I wanted further sedation. I indicated that it would be most welcome and unfortunately that’s all I remember. I woke up at around 5.00pm with a slight headache, and a slight pain in my neck.

 

The nurses got me headache tablets and said that the pain would reduce before the end of the night.

I felt a lot better after tablets, and at around 8.00pm my neck was back to normal.

 

The line was in continual use, and was not a problem, except for the odd infection.

 

The two lumens, (two input lines with connectors) hang outside and are used to connect up to the saline and chemotherapy links. You have to be careful not to pull or wet the line, but other than that, there’s nothing to watch out for.

 

Taking the line out again can either be a very straightforward or quite difficult process, and  I know what you’re thinking, but for once, I had the latter. I sailed through everything else, and right at the end, this final process turned out quite tricky.

 

Now the usual and expected method is simply to apply a gentle pulling pressure and out it comes, but mine took a lot of pulling, which ended up with a small incision being made to finally release it.

 

The area was completely frozen anyway, so I didn’t feel anything, it just took a lot longer than expected. I received 4 stitches in the incision, and that was that.

 

Overall pain rating to remove line 1/10

 

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