I've Been Deported

On Wednesday I went to have my port removed. YEAH!!!

P.A. Thor is shown here, ripping it out of my chest. Actually he did a very neat job of it.

We chatted thru the whole procedure. I could feel what he was doing...it just didn't hurt at all.

I was fond of my port; it was so easy to get my blood drawn and have injections. But it was time for it to go.

Ditto

Hi there, Remember me? Everything has been going hunky dory for quite a while. But soon things will be heating up: visits to the surgeon, Pet scans, Port removal (hopefully)

Speaking of Ports, I went back to the oncologist to have my port flushed. We discussed the rash I got last time. So everyone was EXTRA careful.

The results? Well, you can see from the picture that the rash has returned. Itchy, red and ugly. Grrrrrr.

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS....Until....

I've had nothing to report for weeks. Which is a good thing. Many people thought it meant disaster had struck. But disaster would have been interesting to write about. So I've been quietly, unwritingly, healing and enjoying life.

Then I went to the chemo doctor last week. A routine visit. The nurse drew blood thru my port, as she always does. But over the weekend, for reasons unknown, an ugly rash began to form around my port.

I paid another visit to the chemo doc yesterday so he could check out if my port was infected or I had shingles. He said the rash didn't look like either of those things and told me to use some over the counter creams for the itch. He did tell me to get back to him about it.

Today I woke up and the rash was worse. I'll wait till this afternoon or tomorrow morning to call him again. I have a feeling I'll be making another visit.

It's Showtime!

The first day of treatment: It starts out at the chemo suite. First I'm given some anti-nausea medicine, then I'm given my dose of Mitomycin. Yummy! Then a tube is attached to my port along with a bottle of 5-FU. The bottle will hang from a pouch on my waist for 3 days, then I go back to the suite for a refill. Finally it's all done on Friday.
Here I am with my 5-FU. Inside the bottle is a bulb of the medicine. Over the following days, the bulb will deflate as the medicine goes into me. There's no motor or anything. I'm told it happens thru body movement.
I'm also given pages and pages of info on the medicines. But I'll only tell you about the side effects that happened to me as they come along.

The Port, Part two

I don't know what they injected me with, but I was awake and chatting with the doctor for the whole procedure and didn't feel the slightest thing. Only when I got home did I realize how mauled I had been. I am using here my human avatar to show you just how black and blue I ended up.
The doctor made a little cut up near my clavicle, threaded a tube thru a vein and brought the tube down into the port, just above my breast. It looks like he did an awful lot of excavating to find the perfect placement.
The port itself is about the size of a quarter. After the bruising died down and the cut healed up a bit, I was able to use my arm in all the usual ways.

The Port, Part one

My veins were all screwed up, due to having gotten chemo in the past and only having one 'good' arm to use. So the decision was made, by me and my doctor, to put in a port. I could have not done it. But that would have meant spending a week in the hospital, both at the beginning and end of treatment to get 'infused' with the 5-FU. No thanks. I'll do that port thing.
It's surgery. Here I am getting ready to have the port inserted below my clavicle.