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Fractured line

I'm currently sitting in the treatment room on the Intestinal Failure Unit of St Marks hospital. Thank goodness though it's nothing too dreadful this time. No line infection or anything like that, so don't panic Mother!

My Hickman line has a fracture. That's the medical terminology to say that it's split. As I was disconnecting my feed yesterday I noticed that there was a tear in the line towards the end (below the clamp but above the bionectar)

My first reaction was "Shit! Shit! Shit!" 
My second reaction was "I really haven't got time for this to be be happening right now"
My third reaction was "I hope I don't end up with a line infection"
My fourth reaction was "Calm down and ring the specialist nurses at St Marks"

So that's what I did. They have a patient hotline and you call and leave a message. I'm terrible at leaving messages; I tend to waffle on and on, repeating my name and telephone number numerous times and sometimes getting to the point where the time runs out and you get cut off. But I left my message and got a call back pretty quickly. 

When I told the nurse what I had seen she asked me if I happened to have any electrical duct tape? Not your everyday request but infact I did have some in my messy drawer. You know the drawer I'm talking about. We all have one, usually I'm the kitchen or the utility room. The drawer that we throw all the bits and bobs in that don't have a proper home anywhere else. The nurse told me to patch up the line by wrapping some of the tape around it. The good thing about this tape is that it's waterproof so it should seal up the line temporarily. It only had to last 24 hours as she gave me an appointment to go to St Marks and have it repaired the next day. 

I would have thought that I shouldn't use the line but the nurse said that I needed to feed because after the repair the line would be out of action for 24 hours while the glue dried. And so here I am, lying on the bed while the glue dries. Can you see my purple dress in honour of World IBD Day??


I'm not in a theatre or anything, but the nurse takes care to do everything aseptically and uses all sterile instruments etc. The lovely green scissors you can see in the picture are actually not scissors; they're temporary clamps and have to stay on for the 24 hours of the glue drying. So I'm going to have to go about my business with these poking out of my clothes. If you thought I looked special with the rucksack just wait til you see me with these!

Repairing the line is literally a Blue Peter job. The nurse cuts off the bottom of my line. There it is on the bottom of the trolley. You can see the black duct tape I was talking about. There's two bits as I actually found a second tear last night when I was connecting to my feed. 


So the bottom gets cut off and then a new bit of line is attached to my line. It's glued and then a plastic sheath goes over the join and more glue is applied. And then it's left to dry. For ages. 


At some point in the future I'm going to need a completely new line putting in as this repair will only last for so long. Hopefully months rather than weeks. 

NB x

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