Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

My Port In This Storm

I’m probably going to regret using such a great subject line so early in the game, but it’s such a good double entendre that I couldn’t resist. I had my chemo port installed this morning. It’s a Power Port — how cool is that?! I think it’s going to give me super powers.

For those of you unfamiliar with how chemo ports work, here’s the story. It’s a little dealie (mine is about the size of a quarter) that’s inserted under the skin on the upper chest. It has a silicone “target” area that medical people can “plug in” to for giving chemotherapy, drawing blood, etc. The dealie has a tube-thingie (the catheter) that gets threaded down into a major vein near the heart. It makes it a lot easier to get chemo if the oncology people don’t keep having to look for big healthy veins in your arms. My veins don’t like getting stuff jammed into them. They hide, they roll, they do whatever they can to stay away from anybody with a needle — so this is a really good thing for me.

Anyway, so… they did this at Reston Hospital in the “Interventional Radiology” department. They gave me intravenous sedation so, while I was awake during part of the procedure, I apparently was out of it for the really intense part. I say “apparently” because I don’t remember any of that and when they told me they were done and I looked up at the clock, I was missing about 45 minutes. Either I fell asleep from the sedation or I was abducted by aliens. I’m willing to accept either explanation.

So, I’ve now got an interesting lump under my skin, some stitches, and a weird little hole up a bit higher where I’m supposing they stuck something in to guide the catheter into the vein.