Well folks, it's about time that you climbed aboard the bitter train with me and head off to the city of Hostility with a layover in the town of Resentful. Whooo whooooooo (please make the universal sign for a train by balling your fist and pumping it up and down while making the train noises. We are going for the full effect here)! Why all the negativity, you ask? Simple. It all boils down to one word. Well, actually two I guess. My PORT! Or as Dion calls it, my Wal-Port. He seems to think that it has been purchased at Walmart and that is why it works so well (can you sense the sarcasm?). Here is the latest....
I went to Mayo on Tuesday to get my study shot and to have my port flushed for the first time since ending Herceptin. Now, for you non-cancer readers, the port was used for treatment, but if a person is done with whatever they are using the port for, you still have to maintain it. And you do that by having it flushed with saline and then injected with Heparine to help prevent clots. And yes, they use needles to do so. Anyway, I have always had a problem with my port, sometimes they couldn't get blood out of it and all of the time it was positional. I had to do funky things like wave my hand in the air to get it to work sometimes. So there I would be, sitting in my chair and this is the scene that would play out....
Me, minding my own business, getting my treatment, when all of a sudden.....beep beep beeeeeep....beep beep beeeeeep....Commence flailing of right arm with minor vulgarities. Good. It worked. For about 3 minutes. Beep beep beeeeeep! Shut up! (yes I yelled at my IV. Many times.)
Now imagine 51 weeks of this. Every week. All the beeps, all the arm waving, all of the frustration. Sometimes I did find that sweet spot where it would infuse the whole 30 minutes without beeping. Those days were few, but so wonderful. Ok, back to Tuesday....
As stated above, I had issues with my port so I wondered how my first flush would be after not using it for a month. Do you remember the date on Tuesday? 6-6-06....interesting. I did not have high hopes of things going well, but I did not expect the following.
The nurse followed the procedure of prepping my port to get the needle in it. She started to infuse and it felt like little bubbles followed along my collar bone. It was an odd feeling, but I had that happen two or three times before. After injecting all that had to be injected in me, the nurse pulled the needle out of my port and I looked down to see saline flowing out of the hole the needle left behind. Not dripping. Flowing. So much so that my shirt got wet. The nurse said she had never seen that before. Great. I'll tell you something, I am getting tired of hearing that phrase. So she decided to try to infuse it again. This time, the skin under my port swelled with saline and leaked again when the needle was pulled out. Well, well, well. I had two nurses looking at my port, and they came to the conclusion that something just wasn't right. I was off to have a chest xray done. Lovely. They thought my port was broken. Again. Except if you remember right, after the port study was done I found out it wasn't broken after all. Just a little moody. Like me.
I talked to my oncologist who said the following. And I quote,
"It's broken. Just take it out. You don't need it, so take it out. It won't work anyway so just have it taken out. Take it out."
After his little "take it out" speech was done, I replied with the following. And I quote,
"So are you trying to tell me to take it out?"
Silence. A little giggle and then, "Yes. Take it out."
So here's the part that is frustrating to me. I wasn't ready to have the port removed. It was one of the only things that I had control over, and I wanted to savor that feeling. I wanted the port removed on MY terms, not the ports. I wanted to pick and choose when I had it removed, not be forced to do it now. I am not ready yet. But, regardless of me being ready or not, I have an appointment next Thursday to have it removed. Dang it. That is another reason why I was procrastinating. I know from the first port that it is removed by walking my little butt (ha ha...little butt....) into the office, getting into the reclining chair, having the area numbed and opened and the thing is pulled out. Pulled out! I get shivers just thinking about it. Just a little bit of drugs. That is all I would need to get through the event without getting pale (or in my case, even more pale) and feeling like I was going to fall out of the chair. I have a week to get my brain all worked up in a frenzy. And ladies and gentlemen, that just rocks.
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