How to scare the bejeebers outta yourself

I had a picc line inserted back on June 10th in order to get IV antibiotics to treat lyme disease which has gotten into my central nervous system.

Daily maintenance of the picc has involved flushing with both saline and heparin. I've never felt particularly well since getting the picc, but wrote it off to general lyme ick. I haven't been on the IV antibiotics since June 18th for various reasons and have been doing the saline/heparin flush ever since.

Back on Sunday (the 13th), I was starting my picc flush and suddely WHAM! - felt like someone hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. Add lightheadedness, dizziness, faintness, chest pains, and shortness of breath. Yelled for hubby and he said I had turned bright red.

Got to the ER (after a sireny ambulance ride and a very strange conversation with the EMT). They ran blood tests, a head CT w/o contrast, EKGs, xray to make sure the picc was in place, gave me a massive shot of blood thinners, 3 hours later got a chest CT w/contrast to check for a clot.  The next day, I got a chemical-induced stress test and a cardiac ultrasound.

Nuthin. My tests were called "boringly normal" and "underwhelming".  While I was in there, I was still getting occasional chest pains, dizzy spells, and turning red. At one point my bp was 68/44 (took them 3 tries and 2 different machines before they accepted that it was really this low - I now realize this was probably from the nitro patch they had on me).

No clues, no answers, no suggestions. Still no nuthin. Was discharged with a recommendation to follow up with my PCP, and to see an ENT and get some Dramamine for my dizzy spells. Dramamine makes me dizzy - not going there. They couldn't explain what happened, why an inner ear problem could make me turn red, or why it would hit when I'm standing still and I'd be fine while moving, bending over, etc.

They were under strict orders from the ER doc not to touch the picc the entire time I was there. No flushes, no nuthin. So I sat there for 2 days without proper picc maintenance.

There's so much more to this adventure, but too much to go into here.

How do you get thrown out of a hospital? Walk up to the nurse's station and announce you want the picc flushed before you go home because if you're going to throw a clot it might as well be at the hospital since you're already there. 5 minutes later they flushed the picc and threw my discharge papers at me.

After several episodes of light headedness, dizziness, flushing, shortness of breath, and periodic chest pains since my release from the hospital, I called the IV nurse at the infusion company to ask about any possible side effects to either the saline or the heparin I've been taking.

She talked to their pharmacist. Turns out the heparin I've been using is made from pork. Guess who's allergic to pork? It would also explain why my symptoms didn't get any better in the hospital. While in the ER, they gave me a massive dose of the blood thinner Lovenox, which is also made from guess what?

So all this time, I've been injecting allergens directly into my blood stream. Nobody at either hospital (the one that did the insertion or the ER) OR either of the agencies (infusion company and home visiting nurse) OR anyone at my dr's office ever brought up possible allergies.

I'm lucky ending up in the ER and wasting 3 days was the worst that happened. Not trying to sound terribly dramatic here, but this could have killed me. Seriously.

I've since stopped using the heparin and am just doing flushes twice a day with saline.  They're sending a new kind of picc lock which doesn't require heparin, so I won't have to worry about clotting anymore.  

Geeze!