Well, everything went smoothly today. Check in was on time at 6:30 AM, followed by a walk to the surgical prep area, where I got undressed and out on a hospital gown and robe and was asked numerous questions. An IV nurse started a line in my right hand, after saying that she didn't think she was allowed to touch my (bandaged) left hand. So the bandaging really works as a noticeable deterrent.
The interventional radiologist (IR) doc came in for a visit. We hadn't seen him in years, since he placed my first port. When we asked if he knew how long it had been, he told us it was before the hospital got a new computerized records system, so the best answer we can arrive at 4-5 years.
They were a little late taking me to the IR procedure room, where three nurses and techs descended on me. I transferred from the gurney to the scanner bed. They cleaned and draped the area on my right chest and placed a surgical drape over my face (on a frame to keep it away from my eyes). I was able to turn my head and look out the left side. No claustrophobia issues there. They placed an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth when the cannula up my nose bothered me. Then they gave me an antibiotic and started the Versed and fentanyl.
I became VERY relaxed but didn't fall asleep. I didn't notice them giving me local anesthetic. I could hear them talking to each other throughout the procedure but I didn't know what they were doing or understand the terminology, so it didn't bother me. The whole thing went very smoothly and I was well cared for the entire time.
An orderly wheeled me back to recovery, while the IR went doc spoke with Rik in the waiting area to reassure him I was fine. Rik promptly called my mom, his mom and my sister. He came back to my recovery room and spoke with the IR doc about Canada and photography while I devoured a tuna salad sandwich on whole wheat bread, potato chips (baked not fried, it's a hospital after all), water and apple juice. The red Delicious apple didn't appeal to me, and I saved the cookies for later.
Once they let me up and about, we went to the Ambulatory Infusion Center yo get my zometa. The IR team had left my port accessed so it was the work of moments to hook up saline and the drug. Rik brought me a decaf mocha and a huge chocolate-chocolate chip cookie and then got himself some lunch. (The Swedish-Cherry Hill hospital has the best hospital cafeteria in the area.) The zometa finished around 1:30 PM and we went straight home.
I've been napping on the sofa for the past three hours, tossing and turning a bit and snuggled with dogs much of that time. But at 4:30 PM the dogs were telling me they were too hungry to wait any longer for dinner. After all, they'd had breakfast at 6 AM! Rik fed them and I decided I was awake enough to blog.
Post-op care: No driving or alcohol for 24 hours (no hardship there). No shower until Friday (that could be a stinky problem). Take pain meds as needed. Be aware of signs of infection such as redness at the site, elevated temperature, etc.
I believe I will recover quickly and will keep all informed!
Showing posts with label port. Show all posts
Showing posts with label port. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
New port
I'm off this morning before the crack of dawn to get a new port. Had to bandage my arm so that no one gave me a needle stick in the left hand or arm by accident. Or tried to take my blood pressure. I'll say one thing for the bandaging -- it's hard to ignore.
The new power port should be an improvement over the current portocath. Still, there is risk associated with any anesthesia and procedure. I hope to be blogging again later today.
The new power port should be an improvement over the current portocath. Still, there is risk associated with any anesthesia and procedure. I hope to be blogging again later today.
Monday, August 27, 2007
No Hair Today
Cancer Bitch has returned. Her hair has not.
Our power was out for 24 hours due to the storm that swept through Chicago and environs, but we were out while it was out. We returned to sticks and branches on the street and sidewalks, and a huge uprooted tree trunk around the corner, but our place wasn't damaged much. There is talk of siding that was ripped off, but I haven't seen it.
Last night I saw S for the first time since she left for Mexico in July. She came back while we were in Oregon. She thought I'd shaved my head; she was expecting that my hair had returned. Alas, I am still hairless. The oncology nurse said that I would keep losing hair three weeks after the last chemo. The last chemo treatment was four weeks ago. Most of my head markings are faded, too, except some messy ones around my face. I am bored with head markings. I am tired of rounding up head-decorators. I am tired of ordering tiny bottles of black jagua ink for $25 a pop, and having the black sludge inside turn runny and difficult after a month. I have a cone of henna around here somewhere that I got in an Indian market on Devon but I can't find it.
In Chicago I'm used to strangers complimenting me on my scalp and asking if the tattoo hurt. In Oregon no one said a word. It was either because it was too avant-garde or because it was too faded. I noticed very few piercings in Portland and just a few mohawks. I saw an outstanding colored spiky Statue-of-Liberty-like mohawk just east of Pioneer Square, where black-clad kids and vagrants congregate. Further east, we were excited to read in our guidebook, there's
a Louis Sullivan building downtown called the Auditorium. We went there and found a red brick building with *no* plaque on it and an empty first floor. There was some Sullivan-esque decoration, but it was an otherwise small, plain vertical building, influenced by the Romanesque. It was sort of a red-brick scaled-down version of the Auditorium (Roosevelt University) in Chicago, and was designed basically with a base, column, and capital (well, sort of a capital. The top floors have arches.) L took pictures of it and we saw a guy about a foot away from us taking pictures, too. I asked if he was a Sullivan fan. He didn't know anything about the building and was taking pictures for a collection of Flickr of "ghosts"--those faded painted advertising signs on old buildings.
We came home and consulted a Sullivan biography and looked on the web and found that the building had been designed in 1894 by Frederick Manson White. The guidebook author must have looked up Auditiorium Building somewhere and instead of realizing it referred to the one here, she thought it meant the one in Portland. She had other mistakes in her book, but this was the most grevious. You can see the building here. Scroll down.
Because of the storm, we came back Saturday instead of Friday. My neighbors had a party Saturday night and I wore a scarf with fringe. It was outside and dark and my neighbor thought I had grown rasta-strands. But alas. Alas. Just little stubs, and they are shorter than they used to get between doses of Adriamycin. The Taxol just wiped out my follicles.
Meanwhile, I am waiting. I will get the results of my first genetic tests in about two weeks. That'll tell me whether I have the BRCA gene mutation that's more prevalent in Ashkenazim like myself than the general population. If I have the breast-ovarian cancer gene mutation, I'll get my second ovary removed and then officially be ushered into menopause and will be prescribed aromatase inhibitors. I probably don't have the mutation. The genetic counselor said, based on family history, I have an 18 percent chance of having it. If the first test is negative, the blood will go through another test for more mutations. I think I'll end up keeping my ovary and going on tamoxifen, which can increase my chances of getting uterine cancer. Which could be side-stepped by getting a hysterectomy. So the fun continues.
Warning: The following is obsessive and ultimately, gross:
My attention has turned to the incision where the port was removed. It's a one-and-half-inch horizontal cut between my collarbone and (right) breast. It had super-glue-type stuff on it and a stitch or two, covered by steri-strips. The steri-strips fell off. When we left town it had scabbed up and had a little pus in it and itched. There was a little pink around the edges. Our first night in Portland we had dinner with two former steelworker pals of L's. They're both MDs now. One specializes in infectious diseases and I asked her to look at the cut. She said it looked fine. I asked if I could put antibiotic ointment on it and she said I could if I wanted to. Since, I've had a series of bandaids (some with antibiotic on them) and both the cut and the skin around the cut (where the adhesive part of the bandaid adhered) have been pink and itchy, so much so that there's a pink square surrounding the cut. I know you're going to say I'm allergic to latex, but I'm not, though just to be sure, I bought non-latex bandaids last night. The cut is now bloody and oozy. I have a large, non-latex bandaid on it and no antibiotic cream. It doesn't itch. I think it's fine. There's no pink around the wound itself, no streaks coming from it, so it's not infected. I think there are two schools of thought when it comes to cuts. One is to let it scab up, but then it leaves a scar. The other is to cover it and keep it moist, and it doesn't scar as much. But I think covering it and putting antibiotic ointment on it may make it, paradoxically, more susceptible to infection. That is my scientific finding, based on observation of a very limited population. I'm sure I'm displacing all my cancer anxiety on this small cut, but knowing it doesn't keep me from obsessing.
Our power was out for 24 hours due to the storm that swept through Chicago and environs, but we were out while it was out. We returned to sticks and branches on the street and sidewalks, and a huge uprooted tree trunk around the corner, but our place wasn't damaged much. There is talk of siding that was ripped off, but I haven't seen it.
Last night I saw S for the first time since she left for Mexico in July. She came back while we were in Oregon. She thought I'd shaved my head; she was expecting that my hair had returned. Alas, I am still hairless. The oncology nurse said that I would keep losing hair three weeks after the last chemo. The last chemo treatment was four weeks ago. Most of my head markings are faded, too, except some messy ones around my face. I am bored with head markings. I am tired of rounding up head-decorators. I am tired of ordering tiny bottles of black jagua ink for $25 a pop, and having the black sludge inside turn runny and difficult after a month. I have a cone of henna around here somewhere that I got in an Indian market on Devon but I can't find it.
In Chicago I'm used to strangers complimenting me on my scalp and asking if the tattoo hurt. In Oregon no one said a word. It was either because it was too avant-garde or because it was too faded. I noticed very few piercings in Portland and just a few mohawks. I saw an outstanding colored spiky Statue-of-Liberty-like mohawk just east of Pioneer Square, where black-clad kids and vagrants congregate. Further east, we were excited to read in our guidebook, there's
a Louis Sullivan building downtown called the Auditorium. We went there and found a red brick building with *no* plaque on it and an empty first floor. There was some Sullivan-esque decoration, but it was an otherwise small, plain vertical building, influenced by the Romanesque. It was sort of a red-brick scaled-down version of the Auditorium (Roosevelt University) in Chicago, and was designed basically with a base, column, and capital (well, sort of a capital. The top floors have arches.) L took pictures of it and we saw a guy about a foot away from us taking pictures, too. I asked if he was a Sullivan fan. He didn't know anything about the building and was taking pictures for a collection of Flickr of "ghosts"--those faded painted advertising signs on old buildings.
We came home and consulted a Sullivan biography and looked on the web and found that the building had been designed in 1894 by Frederick Manson White. The guidebook author must have looked up Auditiorium Building somewhere and instead of realizing it referred to the one here, she thought it meant the one in Portland. She had other mistakes in her book, but this was the most grevious. You can see the building here. Scroll down.
Because of the storm, we came back Saturday instead of Friday. My neighbors had a party Saturday night and I wore a scarf with fringe. It was outside and dark and my neighbor thought I had grown rasta-strands. But alas. Alas. Just little stubs, and they are shorter than they used to get between doses of Adriamycin. The Taxol just wiped out my follicles.
Meanwhile, I am waiting. I will get the results of my first genetic tests in about two weeks. That'll tell me whether I have the BRCA gene mutation that's more prevalent in Ashkenazim like myself than the general population. If I have the breast-ovarian cancer gene mutation, I'll get my second ovary removed and then officially be ushered into menopause and will be prescribed aromatase inhibitors. I probably don't have the mutation. The genetic counselor said, based on family history, I have an 18 percent chance of having it. If the first test is negative, the blood will go through another test for more mutations. I think I'll end up keeping my ovary and going on tamoxifen, which can increase my chances of getting uterine cancer. Which could be side-stepped by getting a hysterectomy. So the fun continues.
Warning: The following is obsessive and ultimately, gross:
My attention has turned to the incision where the port was removed. It's a one-and-half-inch horizontal cut between my collarbone and (right) breast. It had super-glue-type stuff on it and a stitch or two, covered by steri-strips. The steri-strips fell off. When we left town it had scabbed up and had a little pus in it and itched. There was a little pink around the edges. Our first night in Portland we had dinner with two former steelworker pals of L's. They're both MDs now. One specializes in infectious diseases and I asked her to look at the cut. She said it looked fine. I asked if I could put antibiotic ointment on it and she said I could if I wanted to. Since, I've had a series of bandaids (some with antibiotic on them) and both the cut and the skin around the cut (where the adhesive part of the bandaid adhered) have been pink and itchy, so much so that there's a pink square surrounding the cut. I know you're going to say I'm allergic to latex, but I'm not, though just to be sure, I bought non-latex bandaids last night. The cut is now bloody and oozy. I have a large, non-latex bandaid on it and no antibiotic cream. It doesn't itch. I think it's fine. There's no pink around the wound itself, no streaks coming from it, so it's not infected. I think there are two schools of thought when it comes to cuts. One is to let it scab up, but then it leaves a scar. The other is to cover it and keep it moist, and it doesn't scar as much. But I think covering it and putting antibiotic ointment on it may make it, paradoxically, more susceptible to infection. That is my scientific finding, based on observation of a very limited population. I'm sure I'm displacing all my cancer anxiety on this small cut, but knowing it doesn't keep me from obsessing.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Port Removal Authority
Friday I got the port removed. It was a fairly simple process, but beforehand involved blood testing and much bureaucracy at Fancy Hospital. A very nice physician's assistant did the job. He was very young, also. When the port was put in, I was knocked out (twilight, I think they call it). This time I was wide awake and the area was numbed with shots of lidocaine. I looked away while we talked--about air conditioning, the great heat wave of 1995 (he was in college at the time), and I forgot what else. There was a tech in the room, who wheeled me in and out, and during the operation sat at a computer and drank take-out that appeared to be coffee.
I went alone. I got an MRI earlier in the week, and went alone, too. It becomes routine after a while.
While I was waiting for the port removal I started talking to three women also waiting. I would call them middle-aged, which means 10 years older that oneself. I guess they were early 60s. Two were there for their friend, who had just gotten a port installed, and was told by the chemo nurses that there was something odd about it. She'd come to get it checked out. I asked how long she was going to have chemo and she said, The rest of my life.
Oh. That kind of breast cancer. The kind that spread.
She'd been cancer-free for six years. She said it was a good six years, that she'd traveled to Europe and had other good vacations. When she was going through treatment the first time, she was living with her sister, who had also been diagnosed with breast cancer. Now her sister has cancer in her lungs and adrenal glands. The woman asked me if I had made any great life changes since my diagnosis and I said not really. I told her I'm a writer and am writing about the breast cancer, but that didn't seem like a great change. She said she's accepted that if that's what God wants for her, it's OK. She was at peace with dying. Though neither of us said the word. Her friends were trying to lighten things: Oh, you'll be fine, etc.
But it is a disease that can't be cured, can only be contained at this point.
This is a disease that makes us sisters. I taught at a writing conference over the weekend and a cheery woman came up and shook hands with me vigorously. Someone had pointed me out to her. She was treated for stage 3 breast cancer and is doing well. I couldn't tell if she was writing about it, too. She had a double mastectomy and had gotten smaller breasts, easier to jog, she said. Another woman there said she was meditating for me. Her sister had died of breast cancer, but hadn't been a fighter. I was afraid she was blaming the victim. I don't know what her sister did or didn't do. What would someone have to not do in order to be giving in to the cancer? Refusing treatment would be up there. I don't think her sister refused treatment. In Jerome Groopman's book on hope, he talks about an Orthodox woman who refuses chemo because she saw the breast cancer as God's punishment for adultery. A more senior doctor convinced her to take the treatment, but much time had passed.
L points out that I have a 16 percent chance of recurrence, which is almost the same chance that Anywoman has of getting breast cancer. Except recurrence for me could include "mets"--metastasized cancer. And that is far more serious than what Anyone might get, first time around.
Friday afternoon a doctor I'd never met called to report that the MRI results were fine, and that I didn't need to be tested again until next summer. Here's hoping. As Emily Dickinson said, "Hope is the thing with feathers." And Woody Allen, of course, said, "How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not 'the thing with feathers.' The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich." And I would add, The thing with feathers is the back of a woman I saw in line at the Jewel. Her boyfriend tattooed wings on her shoulder blades. She offered me his business card but I traffic only in tattoos that are temporary.
I went alone. I got an MRI earlier in the week, and went alone, too. It becomes routine after a while.
While I was waiting for the port removal I started talking to three women also waiting. I would call them middle-aged, which means 10 years older that oneself. I guess they were early 60s. Two were there for their friend, who had just gotten a port installed, and was told by the chemo nurses that there was something odd about it. She'd come to get it checked out. I asked how long she was going to have chemo and she said, The rest of my life.
Oh. That kind of breast cancer. The kind that spread.
She'd been cancer-free for six years. She said it was a good six years, that she'd traveled to Europe and had other good vacations. When she was going through treatment the first time, she was living with her sister, who had also been diagnosed with breast cancer. Now her sister has cancer in her lungs and adrenal glands. The woman asked me if I had made any great life changes since my diagnosis and I said not really. I told her I'm a writer and am writing about the breast cancer, but that didn't seem like a great change. She said she's accepted that if that's what God wants for her, it's OK. She was at peace with dying. Though neither of us said the word. Her friends were trying to lighten things: Oh, you'll be fine, etc.
But it is a disease that can't be cured, can only be contained at this point.
This is a disease that makes us sisters. I taught at a writing conference over the weekend and a cheery woman came up and shook hands with me vigorously. Someone had pointed me out to her. She was treated for stage 3 breast cancer and is doing well. I couldn't tell if she was writing about it, too. She had a double mastectomy and had gotten smaller breasts, easier to jog, she said. Another woman there said she was meditating for me. Her sister had died of breast cancer, but hadn't been a fighter. I was afraid she was blaming the victim. I don't know what her sister did or didn't do. What would someone have to not do in order to be giving in to the cancer? Refusing treatment would be up there. I don't think her sister refused treatment. In Jerome Groopman's book on hope, he talks about an Orthodox woman who refuses chemo because she saw the breast cancer as God's punishment for adultery. A more senior doctor convinced her to take the treatment, but much time had passed.
L points out that I have a 16 percent chance of recurrence, which is almost the same chance that Anywoman has of getting breast cancer. Except recurrence for me could include "mets"--metastasized cancer. And that is far more serious than what Anyone might get, first time around.
Friday afternoon a doctor I'd never met called to report that the MRI results were fine, and that I didn't need to be tested again until next summer. Here's hoping. As Emily Dickinson said, "Hope is the thing with feathers." And Woody Allen, of course, said, "How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not 'the thing with feathers.' The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich." And I would add, The thing with feathers is the back of a woman I saw in line at the Jewel. Her boyfriend tattooed wings on her shoulder blades. She offered me his business card but I traffic only in tattoos that are temporary.
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