Today was the port implant.  We’d been told to get to the hospital at 7:30 for a 7:45 appointment on the 4th floor.  We were (of course) a couple of minutes early, and nobody was around until about 8:00.  I had my book, my sweetie had his music, and we were pretty comfortable, but a little bored.

Eventually people started showing up.  I stripped above the waist and got into a gown.  Various people explained various parts of the procedure, which was fairly complicated.  The PA went over risks and got my consent.  They wheeled me into the room where they do the placement, and M left to do errands, figuring on coming back at 10:30.  So, they put a cap on me and took me into the procedure room, Eventually, they took my book and glasses and gave me a mask, and they started hooking up the IV connections, and then waited.  It seems that one of the machines they needed was in use.  They went to borrow one from a different section, and in the meantime the nurse figured I might as well have my book and my glasses back, so I wasn’t totally bored.  By the time they brought the borrowed machine in they had their own back.  So we didn’t start until I’d been lying there half an hour.  By now, I’d had an antibiotic drip, but they didn’t start the pain drugs until they were ready to go.

Then they took away the book and the glasses,  went over the affected areas a couple of times with disinfectants, put a sterile drape over me, and went to work.  They get into the vein in my neck and drop a catheter down to the vena cava.  Then (if I have the order right) they put in the port, stitch it down, test it in both directions, and either correct or call it a placement.  In my case they called it a placement.  Even with the delay it was just an hour after they’d wheeled me in that they wheeled me back.  M was there waiting for me.  He’d brought small bites of cheese.  They gave me cookies and cranberry juice.  (He got apple juice, too.)

And then we waited through two more blood pressures and they gave me a bunch of followup instructions (sex is not, apparently forbidden, but the nurse thought I probably shouldn’t).  We were free to go.

We stopped upstairs in the oncology unit to deliver stool samples necessary to qualify me for the protocol, but I learned that my clotting time was still outside the margin (although by less than before), so I won’t be doing it.  That means I don’t stand a chance of getting the second drug, but it also means that the amount of time I have to spend at the unit being poked and prodded will be considerably less.  You win some and you lose some.

We got home by about 11:30.  I was okay for a while, but then I lost the bits of food I’d eaten.  (There was morphine in the drip, they told me, so I’d been afraid that would happen.  I don’t like opiates.)  Now the drugs have worn off and, between the bandages that seem to be tying my head into a strange position and the wound, which isn’t horrible but it’s not nice either, I’m not comfortable.