Dysautonomia

Another diagnosis I carry is Dysautonomia. Basically it means that my ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) does not work properly. This is directly due to the area that TM hit me. The higher up you get your lesion the more problems you can encounter. My lesion was at T1, so pretty high up. 

For me Dysautonomia affects my heart rate, making it go too fast (tachycardia), making my blood pressure drop too low (hypotension), make my stomach empty too slowly (gastroparesis), heat intolerance, as I only sweat from my head so I overheat quickly, it also means that it doesn't control body temperature regulation so I can start to get hot and I then overheat or I get cold and stay cold.

I have medication in pill form to increase my blood pressure, They both help but I often only get numbers just above 100/70, otherwise it's low, 80/50. For the tachycardia I can't take any medication as a side effect of them is to also lower blood pressure. For this I do home infusions of NS (normal saline, same composition of salt that's already in the body). I used to go to the hospital for them, but after 13 months I not only needed it more often, but had no veins left. They scarred down, or blew really easily. The few spots left were painful, not just to poke it but also to run the fluids through. I now have a central line. Mine is called a Broviac, it has one lumen and I can infuse my NS bags through it slow or fast, either by gravity or with my portable IV pump. 

A central line enters the chest and is fed through the vessel until it reaches the heart. The tip of the catheter sits just above the entrance to the heart, so it doesn't interfere with its function. I can also get blood drawn through my line.  The danger with central lines is that you are more prone to get infections leading to sepsis if one is not careful. I had a Hichman before, it had two lumens, but I went septic and even though it was not due to my line, it was removed and switched to a Broviac. They did this because I had a hard time getting rid of the blood infection and they though that maybe my line was seeded with the bacteria. 
Both types of central lines I have had are tunnelled, as I mentioned above. 

For more information on dysautonomia go to: www.dinet.org 
For more information on central lines go to: http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/tc/central-venous-catheters-topic-overview