Item 6. TED PLAYS DOCTOR

As I may have said before, Marilyn has a device implanted in her body called a CVS (Central Venous Catheter). It’s very commonly used for cancer patients or anyone who will receive frequent injections and bypasses the complex injection of a needle in a vein. Basically, a plastic tube is connected to a main vein near the heart and threaded near the clavicle and emerges through a small hole in the arm above the elbow. Any nurses needing to inject medicine into the patient simply hooks the medicine container into this tube and the medicine flows with little bother to the patient. (You can use the same device for taking blood). The only issue is that the patient may wear this for many months while he or she is in treatment and thus it needs periodic maintenance and cleaning to assure no infection occurs. Doing this in the hospital can be expensive and bothersome to the patient’s family; doing it in the home is preferable. To facilitate this, the hospital offers training to each caregiver, and I recently took that training, which was somewhat limited. Although they offered a 2-hour lecture with a DVD and some sample equipment, it was difficult to translate these tasks to reality. After training, the caregiver must take a test and demonstrate to a nurse his skills. For me (and probably for most) this turned out to be half proving myself and half learning) more thoroughly. But I was approved for the job and given a large sack of cleaning kits, alcohol, iodine, pads, etc. It’s a little intimidating to do this, but each time I do it I gain more self confidence. And I also learned something from this assignment. There’s a new level of trust that’s going on here between spouses. The caregiver knows the patient needs it, and the patient, whether comfortable or not, becomes submissive to the caregiver for one small moment. Of course, a similar trust occurs when the any caregiver shaves or cleans the patient or helps them in and out of bed. But this particular activity involves a high level of accuracy; there’s a risk if it’s not done correctly, and this heightens the stress built into this trust.