Cancer Guy

Say hello to my 3rd nipple haha
It’s a medi-port used for chemotherapy. Bascially it’s an implant with connection to a blood vessel. Everytime at chmo, this is where the nurse stick the thick needle with a slightly bent tip into and the other end of the needle is connected by a thin tube to the chemotherapy solution bags and bottles. The port makes it easier for the nurse to administer chemotherapy for the patient. Otherwise, they’d have to poke us with IV needles all over the arms and try to find the right vein for the injection. As scary as it sounds, the big needle actually doesn’t hurt when sticking through the skin and into the medi-port. On the other hand, sticking the IV needle gives a pinch and it has this sting while it’s in the arm/hand. I love this medi-port thingy. I wish they can use it for all injections but for some reason, they couldn’t use it for CT scan and drawing blood for lab works. Those tests still require sticking IV needles into the arm/hand… The medi-port was installed right before the starting of my chemotherapy treatment. If I remembered correctly, the implantation was done 2 days before my first chemotherapy session on 5/30/2006. Wow, it has been a part of me for about a year and a half now. Time really fly for sure. My last treatment was December of 2006 so it’s been a little more than a year since it’s last access. That’s great news becuz that means I didn’t need any more chemotherapy!! Hopefully I won’t need it ever again and can have it removed!

In the photo, you can see the round medi-port at the bottom. There is a small red dot in the middle from today’s flushing, basically sticking in a needle and injecting saline/heparin(blood thinner) solution. The hole will heal and disappear in a few days. The horizontal mark above the round port is the incision scar from the implant procedure. The long thin vertical tube is the tube that connects the medi-port to the blood vessel. My collar bone is visible at the top of the photo. There is a bit of redness around the round medi-port, that is what’s left from the band-aid covering it this afternoon/evening. I left the band-aid on for too long. Supposedly it can be removed after 30 minutes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 @ 11:09 pm on the category Cancer, Chemotherapy, Surgery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.