First Chemo with the Femoral Port

It's around 11:30pm and the strong meds that BI gave me are starting to wear off, so forgive me if this gets sloppy.

Well, lets start with the good stuff... Uncle John, Aunt Alma, Aunt Patsy, and Aunt Diane and Uncle Tony Carideo put us up in the Park Plaza hotel. After checking in there we made our way to Flemings Steak House where we had a reservation and gift cards from Auntie Sandi and Big Bill; everything was absolutely phenomenal! If you do get to make your way there, our waiter Tim was Fantastic! I would also like to thank the anonymous person who called in and made a generous donation to our bill, it completely confused us! haha

Alright, again with real life... I suppose I have to start by telling you that the day after surgery, on Tuesday, I began getting a weird heart issue that at times included shortness of breath. I was in contact with my doctors and we agreed that it was safe to wait until today to be physically checked out (if you know me well enough you know this was mostly my decision). Okay, back to today... we went in and discussed the heart thing, an EKG was done, and all came out clear! The port site is still sore from Monday's surgery, the bandage was taken off, blood cleaned up and the needle was put in... what an odd feeling!! My nurse is so amazing she brought us a sample port and explained to us how the entire thing works - wow! what a process! There was an incision made to the left of my right hip, where the actual port was placed; however there was also an incision made in the crease where my leg meets my lower abdomen (this is where the unexpected bleeding came post surgery on Monday). Today as the last chemo was being administered, I noticed blood coming from the port site, so my nurse came in and checked it out. Two of the nurses cleaned it and used new steri-strips to hold the the unhealed part, between the stitches together, and once again all is well! My instructions are to stop "doing stuff that will pull the stitches", and to call if the heart palpitations get worse, I get a fever, etc., etc. Anyways, the interesting part of all of this is that the port, that is places near my hip has tubing that connects to the femoral vein in my leg and then runs all the way up my body, through my circulatory system into my heart! John Michael took some pictures of the port that you will find below.













Upcoming Appointments:
Torso CT Scan: Sunday 8/15/10
Scan Results & Pulling Stitches: Thursday, 8/19/10
Chemo if the plan remains the same: (I pushed it back one week) Friday, 9/3/10