Port Report

First and most obviously, I didn't die or fall into a coma. Yay for me!

Second, Voila! Doctors now have easy access to the blood flowing into my heart via a chest port. You can see the device in this picture of the x-ray they were using that I took with my phone when the procedure was finished. The port is the triangle shape on the left, and then the little tube runs up from the port to about my collar bone, makes the turn and drops into whatever the big vein up there is, and then runs inside the vein down toward my heart.

Third, I have no idea what those little black dots are near the bottom of the x-ray, but they're kind of freaking me out. They don't really look like the sort of thing that belongs there, but maybe they're perfectly normal. What do I know? I assume I'll find out next week when I meet with my oncologist before my first round of chemo. They took a CT scan of my chest last week and I'm figuring a report on the results will be part of that appointment's agenda.

The procedure to install the port was actually pretty straightforward, at least from where I was sitting. This time, I was actually awake for the whole thing; awake, but not really engaged. They had my face covered so I couldn't really see anything, and the only thing I felt was when they set the port into position. Someone said, "you'll feel a little pressure," and then I felt this crazed wiggling and pushing on my chest. But it only lasted a few seconds and wasn't a big deal. Aside from that, it was mostly just a matter of laying there. 

Looking at it from the outside later, the most obvious indications that something happened are the incision above the port that they used to place it and then a second, smaller incision up where the tube makes the turn that they used to get the tube into the vein. Aside from that, there's not much to see. The port sits below the skin, but you can barely notice it's there. I, on the other hand, am very aware it's there and keep wanting to touch it. I can also sense the tube running up to my collar bone and keep wanting to rub at that, too. 

I'm hopeful that over time I'll start to forget that the stuff is there. Of course, there's also a perverse part of me that thinks it would be amusing to go get "Insert chemo here" with a little arrow tattooed next to the port.

But I'll let the incisions heal first, at least.

Update:
As I think more about it, I 'm starting to think those black dots on the x-ray may be the leads from the surgical monitors they had on me. Apologies for any inadvertent panic I might have caused.