Takeaway
As a clinician, writing this poem about my daughter’s PICC line was a reminder to focus on optimizing patients’ quality of life. While a medical device can alleviate a patient’s health problem, its presence is a constant reminder of illness.
Creative Arts in Medicine | April 1, 2025 | 1 min read
By Miriam Colleran, MD, St. Brigids Hospice & Naas General Hospital, Ireland
They smiled at the list with their professional problem-solving gaze: bloods ordered, x-rays requested, confirmed the PICC line re-insertion, tick, tick, tick, another job done, momentary self-congratulations, they were actually ahead of their jobs today and had time to reward themselves with coffee in a compostable cup before the lunchtime meeting.
She looked at the headed letter with the date for the reinsertion of her PICC line. She relished the past fortnight’s freedom; her life without it. She savored showering and bathing and not thinking: “Mind the PICC . . . don’t get the PICC wet.” She cherished swimming, swishing in water. She slept unimpeded by that long line for those blissful days and nights of ordinary life. Soon another intravenous cannula would extend from her elbow deep into her chest to give her immunotherapy, steroids, “flushes,” and whatever else was needed to push the life-changing regime into her body. Looming ahead was incarceration, again . . . sentenced to wear a long sleeve for months . . . to hide the PICC and camouflage her body wilting from wrestling with illness and tattooed from treatments.
This fictionalized poem was inspired by my daughter’s experience of having four PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) lines. They were needed as a part of the ongoing management of her pulmonary capillaritis due to difficulty with intravenous (IV) access. Getting a PICC line was a welcome development in comparison to the increasing ordeal of getting IV access.
As a mother and doctor, watching my daughter’s personal experience of consecutive PICC lines and the greater freedom she’s experienced with the more physically discrete portacath has been a learning experience.
In the poem, I reflect on the inadvertent mismatch that may occur between the perceptions of the clinicians, which were purposeful and task-focused, and the patient’s lived experience of the personal benefits and costs of having a PICC line.
Watching and supporting my daughter negotiating life and managing illness, she inspires me to see beyond a medical pathophysiological practice to a whole person care model that focuses on optimizing the person’s experience of living with their illness.
This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.