I am typing this slowly because I am in a not-insignifcant amount of pain and while I don’t type the way a dervish whirls, even small movements are rather scintillating in the needle-like pain department BECAUSE I GOT MY PORT-CATH IMPLANT REMOVED THIS AFTERNOON.
I was so excited I could barely sleep last night and I made sure to get to the hospital early like I was worried about making it through security for an international flight or something. Everything was easy. I found parking instantly. The check-in was painless and my only complaint was the little Outback Steakhouse pager thing they gave me to get called in for prep was numbered 68. One number off the good one. Damn it.
Took off all my clothes and played sudoku on my phone for 45 minutes after signing a waiver. Talked to nurses about my tattoos. Talked to nurses about cancer. Talked to nurses about how rad I think nurses are.
Both the waiting area and the prep zone are weird spaces because everyone in them is either nervous and concerned about the procedure they are about to undergo, or waiting for someone that is undergoing something, or they are medical professionals and they’re doing what people do at work which is complain about computers in between random conversations about skin care routines or Todd and Elaine’s trip to Spain last week.
Then they rolled me down a series of hallways in an effort to confuse me, which worked. If I had to get up and run away I never would have found my way out. The procedure room for Interventional Radiology is kinda neat in that it has all the trays and tubes and big crane arms with pieces of electronics on the end I am used to but also the table I hopped onto can slide right into a CT machine if needed, which I did not need but found interesting. They will play any music you request while you’re in there, but it’s so quiet I couldn’t hear it anyway so I dunno if Head East was actually heading east or not.
Talked about growing up in Milwaukee while they scrubbed my chest with stinky antiseptic and built a little window of towels and stuff around it. Then I was told to turn my head to the side and they taped some more towels around the work zone and as one person did that another put a metal frame on the left side of the bed near my face and said “this is gonna be your window” which I did not understand until they built a blanket fort around my head. I guess they don’t want people looking at them while they root around in there.
Then the normal sort of countdown to cutting that happens where folks arrange stuff and other folks say “the time is such and such and so-and-so who was born on X date is here for port removal. He is allergic to codeine and…. long pause… *this is where I yell out of the blanket fort “IRINOTECAN!” and they chuckle and repeat my pronounciation and I get jabbed and cut and etc. I can’t describe the actual procedure because I couldn’t see it and once the lidocaine was injected all I felt was pressure while they did whatever. I was not sedated so it was basically 15 minutes of me asking them what body parts they don’t like working on while they pried the thing out of me. The PA said when he worked in the ER he would run away whenever someone came in with a fingernail or toenail avulsion, and that he also can’t handle it when his kids get a loose tooth. The nurse talked about her dad drilling a hole in his thumb to relieve pressure after he slammed it in a car door. I talked about smashing my teeth to smithereens in a bicycle mishap. Also getting all my guts removed and put back in a different state. You know, normal small talk.
I apparently had a fair amount of scar tissue around the port that caused some grumbling, but other than that nothing to note. They would not let me film it, so you’re all lucky in that regard.
They rolled me back to the prep bay and made me sit there for 30 minutes to make sure my neck didn’t explode or anything, and then I drove home.
I can’t bike or climb or lift anything or push anything or pull anything for a week or two. This is really going to fuck up my training for the next sumo tournament. The site hurts like the dickens. Nothing ice packs and a little time won’t fix.
That’s that. No more weird implant in my chest. I have typed enough about my love-hate relationship with the port. I am grateful for the technology and I am glad to no longer have it inside me.
Happy Wednesday! Everyone hug a friend! Disorganize an organization! Be cool!