Line Care, and Making Peace With the Routine

When you first come home with a line, the care that goes with it can feel like a mountain. Sterile technique, every single day, no days off and no exceptions, with infection always sitting somewhere in the back of your mind. I remember how much it weighed on me at the start. Not the doing of it, particularly. The relentlessness of it, and knowing it was not going to stop.

What changed things for me was turning it from a fear into a routine. That sounds like a trick of language and it is not, it is the whole thing. I set up a clean, calm space that was mine and stayed set up, so I was not assembling it from scratch every time. I gave myself plenty of time rather than squeezing it between two other jobs. And I stopped rushing it, which was the hardest part, because rushing felt like winning.

Done slowly and properly, the same way each time, it becomes second nature, in the way brushing your teeth is second nature. Your hands learn the steps even on the days your head is somewhere else entirely, and there will be plenty of those. The routine carries you when you have nothing to give it.

That does not mean you switch off, and I want to be clear about that. Respect for the line is exactly what keeps you safe. If anything ever looks wrong or feels wrong, you get it checked, and you do it that day rather than talking yourself out of it. But respect and fear are two very different things, and only one of them is any use to you. You can keep the first and let go of the second.

If you are just starting out, be patient with yourself. You are learning a genuinely difficult skill at the worst possible moment, while frightened and while grieving, and nobody does that gracefully. It gets easier, I promise. One careful day at a time, it stops being the thing that runs your life and goes back to being just one small part of it.