Time for a port.

Today I got a port placed in my chest. Basically, it's a button thing that is inserted under my skin and connected to a vein that I can get medicine through. This will make my chemotherapy a lot easier. The actual procedure required surgery, though, and I was required to have someone escort me home.

Now, I do live alone, and I take great pride in being an independent woman. So asking someone to go out of their way to sit for hours waiting for me during surgery was a total headache. I hate asking people for favors. And even though I have cancer, I still don't expect favors from people!

But despite all this, I still needed someone. So I did what every Internet child did: I asked my friends on Facebook! I updated my status asking if someone could go with me to the hospital to escort me home after a minor surgery.

I'm not lying: within 15 minutes, at least 10 of my friends offered to go with me. It kind of shocked me. I even had friends from Miami offering to fly up for the day to be with me. Some people said they were busy but called other friends of theirs in New York City (who I had never met) and said they would help out. It really hit me at this moment: I have awesome friends.

My friend Nikolia wound up helping me home that day (and she is awesome because she is patient and shares my desire to play with hospital gloves!).

Nikolia found the box of hospital gloves.

I also can't forget to mention one friend in particular, Sharaf, who I met in my master's program, who made it his own mission to find someone in our group of friends to help me the day of my surgery. At least three people told him they could go. (Sharaf has been an incredible help and support. I will - at a later time - write a blog about him with his consent!)

I still don't like asking for favors, but if I really needed anything, I know for a fact that my friends would be there for me. After all, I have the best friends a girl could ask for. I'm such a lucky gal!