The Hole Time

I got my port out yesterday (Ha.Le.LUJAH.) and guess what, you guys? My port was PURPLE. The whole time!

And honestly, if I'd have known the thing was purple, I might have hated it less. (Because....I'm a fifth grader?) Actually that's probably not even true; I hated that thing from the second they put it in, and now it's out and (I can't believe I'm admitting this) sitting next to me on my bed in a biohazard bag.

Yup.

I've already been called (lovingly, by me best friend) or had it insinuated that I am (by one of the operating room nurses) a total freak for taking it, but I really wanted to examine it up close. The needle hurt a lot every time it went into my chest before chemo, so it's somewhat satisfying to see where exactly the tips ended up. I can actually see the holes in the rubber from the needles. So sticks and stones, people, sticks andddd stones.

For those who don't remember/don't want to wade through Justin Bieber videos to get to my old posts about my port, here's the 411: the type of chemo I was getting would've been risky to administer in a temporary arm IV, so they installed a "power port" in my chest above my right breast and below my collarbone. It was roughly the size of six quarters stacked together. And as you can't just stick something that thick without displacing anything else in your body, they had to (ughhh, grossss, GULP, sorry) "scoop out a pocket" in my chest to create a place for the port to go in.

All summer long I was really careful not to get sun on the scar itself in the hopes it wouldn't be as noticeable in the future, but then I also realized I would probably have a weird, sunken-in, hole-like spot where they port was. I asked my surgeon about it before the surgery, and they told me they minimize that effect by stitching the skin together underneath. I couldn't really picture how that works, but great!

It's actually not as bad as I thought it would be. Like after the placement, I have a two-inch incision stitched or rather glued together by this weird, clear medical glue that will most likely stay on for a few weeks, and the area where the port actually was is only slightly sunken and weird. I'm really sore and protective of the wound (example: the terror I feel whenever my mom stops short while I'm wearing a seatbelt), but I know it'll feel and look better eventually. And I once again have full use and extension of my neck!

But how it looked and felt in my body was only half the reason I resented it so much; it barely ever worked properly on the first go around. Before I could be administered chemo, the nurses would have to draw blood to make sure my white blood cell count was high enough to withstand treatment, and they had to do so from my port. So one of the nurses would stick the needle in and try to extract blood, but every time they ended up pumping the empty syringe 30 times or so, only to have, at best, a tiny trickle of blood come out. I'd then have to go into a private room and lay in all types of positions to try to get enough blood flow for the pump to work: one leg up, now the other, now both, now sit down, now put your arms up, one arm, etc. In the beginning that would be enough, but for the last six treatments--and I am not kidding--I was doing jumping jacks and skipping around the halls of my doctor's office to get my blood pumping. I even tried hula-hooping a little. All of this with a needle in my chest, in front of other patients getting their treatments. I felt like a total moron, plus I barely had energy to skip around, which is why I think I wasn't able to see it as funny as I see it now. But it always worked, and so it became just another weird thing that eventually became normal over the months during treatment.

But that's done, and the port's gone. If nothing else, having a weird, plastic object in my body for the past 6 months has reinforced my notion of breast implants as terrifying, so there's that, too.

The gray part in the middle is rubber, where the chemo needle would go in.

Also, they washed it, I swear.