The PICC Line Wasn't the Hard Part. Hiding It Was.

For almost ten years, I've lived with Lyme disease. The last two have been the hardest, a port in my chest, then a PICC line in my arm, and a treatment schedule that didn't care that I was also trying to finish a master's degree.

I'd drive back and forth between campus and treatment more times than I can count. Some days it was a two-hour round trip sandwiched between classes. I got good at it.. the logistics, the timing, the way you learn to function around a body that's asking for more than you have to give.

But the logistics were never the hard part.

The hard part was sitting in class with a stiff, white, unmistakably medical cover on my arm, feeling every eye that lingered a second too long. Feeling like the line was introducing me before I got the chance to introduce myself. I wasn't ashamed of being sick. I was exhausted by the performance of managing what other people made of it, the second-guessing, the over-explaining, the small, constant calculation of who deserved to know and who was just staring.

That's a specific kind of tired. Not the fatigue of illness itself, but the fatigue of being visibly ill in rooms that weren't built to hold that. Nobody talks about that labor, the mental math of sleeves, cardigans, and seating angles, all just to feel like a student again instead of a patient who wandered into the wrong room.

“I started designing PICC line covers because I needed one that didn't announce my diagnosis before I did.”

Something that looked like it belonged to me, not to a hospital supply closet. It sounds small. It wasn't. The difference between dreading a class and simply attending it came down to a few inches of fabric on my arm.

That's the gap Nova exists to close. Not the clinical gap, the medical devices already do their job. The dignity gap. The space between what treatment requires of your body and what it takes from your sense of self while you're in it.

Adaptive medical wearables shouldn't be an afterthought stitched on once function is solved. They should be designed with the same intention as anything else you choose to put on your body, because during treatment, what you wear is one of the only things you still get to choose.

I'm building Nova for the version of me who sat in that classroom, arm tucked under the desk, hoping no one would ask. She didn't need less medicine. She needed a cover that let her feel like herself while she took it.

Nova Medical Wearables designs PICC line and midline covers built for comfort, confidence, and everyday life — because looking like yourself shouldn't be optional during treatment.