Port Surgery Complete

The surgery went well on Monday and I’m ready for chemo on Thursday.

My Mom and I got to the hospital at 6:20 am. I was really nervous just for the fact that I have never had any type of surgery before and the lack of sleep from the night before.
We check in and directed to my room. The first attempt to hook up the IV failed and caused nothing but pain and lots of blood in my left arm. The nurses and I joked around that at least this is the last time I have to deal with an IV. Pretty ironic that my IV gets botched when I go in for a port placement!

The nurses finally get the IV going on my right arm with some saline and some antibiotics. At 8am I meet my surgeon and we go over the procedure briefly. I explain to him that I still have a cough from being sick and ask if this can cause problems. He states that if my cough is harsh enough that I can pull the tube right out of my vein so I just need to be aware of my cough and don’t purposely cough hard. That is a scary enough thought to make me not want to cough at all.
They wheel me into the surgery room where it is ice cold. They have me switch beds and thankfully the new bed has a heating blanket. They start hooking up all these sensors to my chest, stomach and legs. Then they shave my chest and start cleaning the area. That’s it…. I don’t remember anything after that.

I woke up in my room and by 12pm -ready to go home. The next couple of days my chest feels like I have a 20lb weight tied to it and moving around, sleeping and especially coughing hurt like hell. But overall I am happy I got the port put it in and anxious to see it in action tomorrow.

Some good news is that the size of the tumor on my neck has gone down considerably. It’s like it is not even there now. I know it’s there and I can still feel it but if I tried to tell a complete stranger that I had a tumor growing on my neck they would think I was crazy. Hopefully the tumors in my chest are going down just as much.