I stick them in, and then 4 hours later I pull them out

Yup, I'm now to the point where I'm sticking my own needles in pretty much without assistance and taping the down, hooking the tubes from the needles up to the machine. All this with just 1 hand. 4 hours later I'm pulling them out myself and not making all that much of a mess. The needles as you may remember from my picture a few weeks ago are pretty big, 16 Gage to be exact.

Right now I'm still using sharp needles but the goal is to keep putting them in the exact same position so that I can us dull needles. I will have 2 holes in my arm, the idea being that eventually it would be similar to putting an earring in, I don't have an piercing so I don't really know what that is like, but right now it is somewhat painful. I just grit my teeth and just keep pushing the needle in until I'm in the vain, then level it off and finish inserting it all the way.

My blood pressure has still be dropping at the end, today it got as low as mid 50s over mid 40s. I was already disconnected so the nurses considered putting my on an IV drip to give me fluid to bring it up. I didn't end up having to do that but they were treating it pretty seriously, I felt ok though so I was just relaxing.

Tuesday next week I will be getting the line in my chest out. After 16 months of having to sponge bath I will finally be able to have a proper shower next week, and simply be more comfortable not having a tube coming out of my chest, I can't wait. It was originally scheduled to come out this past Wednesday but there was some concern that it was too soon and postponed a little less than a week.

I'm still just completely beet so for the next little while there may only be weekly updates, I'll try to keep up though.

Owen