Port Placement Surgery and Radiation Oncology Appointment
The one thing that I have learned throughout this whole process is that things will change. The other thing I learned is that if you don’t advocate and ask questions, you may find yourself having no idea what is going on or why things are being done the way they’re being done. I am a control freak. I like to have control over everything in my life, and it has been really hard for me to give up some control to the doctors during my treatment. However, because I ask lots of questions and do research on my own, I am able to navigate this whole process with a little less anxiety.
The Elliot Versus Dana Farber
In my last post, I wrote about the chemotherapy teach session that I had with a nurse from my Medical Oncologist’s office. This appointment is to give you all the information you need to know and answer any questions you may have about your treatment. She shared that I would be getting three weeks of chemo followed by a week off to recover. She was wrong. This is one of the examples of how this whole process isn’t streamlined and there are so many hands in the cookie jar that if communication is lacking between the owners of the hands, then I, the cookie jar, is given bad “cookies” (information). (I will be getting twelve weeks straight of chemotherapy, like I had originally been told by my Medical Oncologist.)
I’ve worked with The Elliot and Dana Farber throughout this whole process, and so far, The Elliot is winning the competition for having a streamlined and bump-free collaboration between doctors. This isn’t to say that Dana Farber is worse than The Elliot, but so far, I’ve had better experiences with The Elliot. I just keep telling myself, this isn’t forever, so there’s no point in switching to a different Medical Oncologist, I just have to get through the next twelve weeks. I’ve also found that as things progress, the bumps tend to smooth out. I will say that the nursing staff at Dana Farber are awesome, and my Medical Oncologist is giving me the exact treatment I would’ve wanted had I been the one deciding so I can’t complain. I just wish there was better communication between the various levels of staff regarding my treatment and ordering lab work, etc.
The Port Placement
Monday, I went in for minor surgery to have a port placed in my chest which will be where the nurses can draw blood and inject my different drugs during chemotherapy. I am not a fan of having foreign objects in my body, for example breast implants, or the IUD are not on my list of things to get ever, but at this point, after everything I’ve been through in the past two months, a port placement is nothing. It’s temporary, and will mean no more IVs.
For the actual procedure you’re given a minor sedative which wears off very fast and you are awake for the surgery. It only took about twenty minutes total for them to complete the actual placement and I only felt one stitch at the very end. The fasting pre-surgery was by far the worst part of the procedure. They give you an IV when you get into the hospital, make you wait for a long time for the actual surgery, and then wheel you out back.
The room where you have the port placement is some sort of radiation room, so there are all these computer screens over the table. This was the first time I’ve been fully awake in the operating room and it was really neat to look around and see all of the different things that are in there. They have you get onto the table, then kind of smoosh you with plastic trays and get you nice and tucked in. Next they start the sedative and it takes about five minutes to kick in. I felt sort of tired, like I needed to close my eyes, and I know I was hearing people talking, but I don’t really remember much of what was said. I didn’t doze off although some people do, I just kept my eyes shut.
After they place the port and stitch you up, you go back out to the recovery room and by the time I was in there, I was almost fully unsedated. I was able to leave rather quickly after reaching the recovery room (probably within forty minutes I was discharged).
The biggest issue for the first day after the port placement is that it’s really tight in your neck and you can feel it when you talk or move your head. It hurts to talk and move a lot and just feels really uncomfortable. I think the port placement was more annoying than the breast surgery, perhaps partially because I had expected it to be a non issue and it turned out to be rather annoying and more painful than I had anticipated. Today, five days after surgery, it is still a little sore where the tube connects to my vein, but it’s getting better every day and I know I’ll get used to it.
Radiation Oncology Appointment
This appointment was more of an introduction/consultation appointment and took very little time. I was, however, pleased to learn that my Radiation Oncologist is extremely smart and had tons of data to back the benefits of the course of treatment I would be getting. I had been told by my surgeon back when I first got diagnosed with cancer that I’d be getting six weeks of radiation therapy. However, I will only be getting four weeks because my cancer didn’t involve the lymph nodes. I’ll still receive the same level of radiation that would normally be given in the six week cycle, but over a shorter amount of time. Radiation won’t begin until three to four weeks after I have finished chemotherapy so that I have time to recover.
Final Thoughts
In the past week and a half, I have had seven doctors appointments. It has been exhausting. Now, I am on day two of my first round of chemotherapy, and I’m looking forward to the slowdown of appointments again. Everything is going smoothly with chemo so far, and I’m really hoping that I have minor side effects and can maintain a somewhat normal lifestyle throughout the next twelve weeks.
One more thing I wanted to say regarding my blog posts is that my course of treatment has changed throughout the posts and instead of going back and editing old posts with the new information, I’m going to leave them as-is to save myself some work and to keep things authentic. Every person has different treatment plans, reacts differently to treatments, and my own experiences are unique to me and shouldn’t be assumed to be the norm because there is no norm. I am hoping that my posts will help someone who is going through the diagnostic process feel less confused and alone because I know that when I was first diagnosed I had so little knowledge about cancer that I was blind-sided and terrified. I also am hoping that I can look back on these posts one day and see how much I went through to remind myself of how darn strong I am.
If I can navigate this, there is really nothing else that could trump it, as far as I’m concerned. Cancer has always been a very big fear of mine, and yet here I am navigating it successfully, taking a doctoral level class, and managing to put together a decent amount of posts about the process, while still trying to maintain some level of fitness to boot. It just goes to show that we are stronger than we think we are, including me.
