I Will Survive

It's past midnight and I should be in the bed. I have to be at the hospital at six in the morning for surgery prep to have my power port removed. This is the mechanism through which I have received my chemotherapy treatments for the past year. It is marking the end of the cancer era for me and the beginning of a new one....the one of SURVIVORSHIP!!

I am excited about having this foreign object removed from my body because it has been a big inconvenience from day one. The doctors all worked overtime to convince me to have this port implanted because it would make treatments go so much smoother than having to place an IV for every treatment. Their argument was that with this port they could draw blood AND administer my chemo through a one stick process every time. It sounded GREAT - but if you guys REALLY know me, then you know NOTHING medically is ever that easy when it comes to me.

From day one my port was a big PAIN IN THE ASS!!! I won't even talk about how I had to be awake during the surgery while they implanted it into my chest and ran the tube from my port, up to my neck and into my jugular vein so it emptied directly into my heart to pump those toxic chemicals through my system. Yea, I'd better not mention the HORROR of that ordeal. Or of how my port was tilted at an angle that no one could seem to access through just ONE stick. Or of how there was only one person who could ever access it properly the first time. OR of how, when the nurses saw me coming in for treatment, they scattered about like worker ants who SUDDENLY had so much to do because none of them would come near me or my port because of how I gave the business to the first nurse who inflicted so much pain upon me!! Yea, the nurses and I got a big laugh out of it MUCH later but none of them EVER attempted to try when it was time for the 'sticking' to be done. Hilarious was when they tried to send in a 'new girl' one day to do it. I didn't have the heart to send her to her demise so I properly informed her that the other nurses were setting her up for failure. Then I promptly sent her BACK out to the nurses station to tell them to quit playing!!!

AHHHHHH.....the good ol' days.

Well, I'd better go to bed because I have less than five hours to sleep. Pray for the medical staff that this all goes well. If it doesn't, you'll read about it tomorrow!!