Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Peter the Power Port Thug is out!

Warning - more gross skin pictures in this post! So if this sort of stuff bothers you, close the page - fast! Otherwise, scroll down...























Ok, you're still with me. Here we go!

Today I got the port out. Here's what it looked like yesterday while still in my chest:


The black dot is not a scab - it's part of the port that's erupted through my skin. Think Sigourney Weaver and the Alien movies and you get a small sense of what this looks like. Although it's not infected and I  haven't been running a temperature, the oncologist was pretty convinced that this was a risk that we no longer could tolerate. So out it came!

The procedure for removing it is pretty straightforward. Numb things up locally, dig around for a bit with some typical surgical tools (the thoracic surgeon had me turn my head the other way so I can't report on what tools he used ) but there was a fair amount of grinding, grunting and pulling while he got it to come off my pectoral muscle and out through the previous incision.

Here's a picture of my chest post removal:

I'm sure that will heal up nicely with no scaring. Right...

And here's the bad boy himself, safely ensconced in a biohazard bag.


I was a bit bummed leaving the surgeon's office. I've spent the last few months thinking about how cool it will be to get the port out as this would indicate I was done with chemo. But that's not the way it turned out. I'm only about 45% done. So I get 13 days without any funky hardware in my body and then I get the PICC line. It will be a bit of a PITA (Pain In The Ass). Needs to be flushed every day so another job for my awesome wing-woman to take on. I'm not sure how many activities I can do with my upper body with a PICC line installed but the chemo nurses tell me that they have some very active patients with PICC lines so I'm hopeful I'll still able to do most things.

3 comments:

  1. Bad news about the port, but excellent news about NED! (See, cancer is just like IT - all about the acronyms.) So glad to hear that the war is being won and the end is in sight.

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  2. yup, definitely heading in the right direction! And thx so much for the books. Just finished the Gone Away World. What a great read! I especially like the bwa-ha-ha-ha phrases to indicate pure evil. And of course The Forever War is a classic, too.

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  3. Fun fact: Nick Harkaway is the son of John le Carre (the spy thriller guy). Glad you liked it. I think any writer brave enough to describe martial arts moves deserves special kudos. (Or would that be "judos"?)

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