Thurs, 31 May 2007

My Dear Friends,

Just when I thought I had taken every medical test known to mankind, they come up with another one!

At chemo on Tuesday, my port was not working. (A port is a metal disc implanted below my collarbone, attached internally to a tube going into a major vein. The nurses puncture my skin above the port to hook me up to the chemo but that's a lot less painful than starting an IV.)

The nurses tried and tried to push an injection of fluid through to get it started but it wouldn't work, so they ended up digging around in my arm with a huge needle to start an IV instead.

They said I needed to go the next day for a portogram! Great, just when I thought it was safe...

Of course they also had to give me a pregnancy test because, I assumed correctly, a portogram involved an xray in some way. Pregnancy test? As if!

So I let them poke me again in the same arm to save me the trouble of going to another lab and wasting time.

Yesterday I was pretty nervous about this new test. All the nurses told me was this test would see why the post was not working.

Got to the hospital at 11:45am for my 12 noon test. Didn't get outta there until 2pm! (Don't get me started...)

Anyway, a very nice doctor met with me and she said the actual test takes only five minutes. I was very nervous, my own fault for not looking this up on the Internet the night before. Basically, they'd try to access the port just like my nurses then inject some radioactive dye into my chest to watch where it goes on the xray.

The conclusion was that the technician was able to access the port as normal, although she had to push the fluid syringe a little harder than the nurses did. Looks like there was either a small clot or the end of the tube inside was pushed up against the wall of my vein. I should be good to go next week.

It'd better work. That stupid IV was no fun on Tuesday. After trying ridiculous things to get the port to work like raising my arms, lying back in the chair and turning my head to one side, I was pretty upset. When they started digging around with the needle in my arm, another (wonderful) patient tried to distract me by asking questions about my weekend. I wasn't having it. She came over with Kleenex and asked if there was anything she could do. I asked her to hold my hand and she did, God bless her.

So much for being strong.

I will write again to update what's been going on this past month.

Love,

Jeanette