It was Sunday morning. On any other week, I would be in Matins at St. Philip Antiochian Orthodox Church, Souderton. Instead, I was being wheeled down to a room with a CAT scan machine. Steve even headed my gurney into the room in the correct direction. It was a tight fit. The room obviously had not been built with this huge machine in mind. They gingerly slid me from the gurney onto the bed of the machine. They fed me into the machine feet first.
While the machine was imaging the area, Dr. Osuego carefully snaked a line in to take a biopsy of, or a sample of the fluid from the sac that had attached itself to my spine at T10-T11. He then installed the PICC line from my left forearm for the intravenous antibiotic. It was going to be a long haul.
A PICC line is, by definition and per its acronym, a peripherally inserted central catheter. It is long, slender, small, flexible tube that is inserted into a peripheral vein, typically in the upper arm, and advanced until the catheter tip terminates in a large vein in the chest near the heart to obtain intravenous access. It is similar to other central lines as it terminates into a large vessel near the heart. However, unlike other central lines, its point of entry is from the periphery of the body the extremities. *
He was a sweet, gentle, middle-aged man, with what sounded like a hint of a South American accent with kind eyes. I thanked him for working on a Sunday morning. He was cheerful and that made all the difference. I don’t remember any unpleasantness in the procedure. I just remember this beautiful man.