Showing posts with label port. Show all posts
Showing posts with label port. Show all posts

Friday, August 13, 2010

New port, same attitude.



Good news! I'm officially one third of the way finished with my treatment! Take that motherf****r Alice!!!

Today was chemo treatment number 4 of 12. Doesn't seem like much, but knowing that I am one third of the way finished makes everything feel so much better and definitely keeps my spirits high!

Today was also the first time I used my new port. I had it surgically implanted in my chest yesterday. It makes chemo SO much easier (despite all the pain caused by the poking and prodding it took to access it under all the swelling. FUN TIMES!).

For the past several treatments I had been receiving my chemo through IVs, which hurt my veins for days after. It also took much longer for me to receive my treatment. I'm not going to lie - the drugs are some serious stuff! It burned in my veins so much that the nurses had to slow down my dosages. So what would normally take an hour took two and a half. What a great way to spend a Friday.

So hooray for the port! Anyone getting chemo should have one. It makes life a whole lot easier. Now time to celebrate!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

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!