Getting the port removed

Hi everyone

Well Week 1 is officially in the books now! The lady from the home health company will come over to our house every other Sunday and remove the port so I don’t have to be hooked up to that for 2 weeks and I am not getting any more poison going in me until next Friday.

Carol took some pictures of what the port removal process looks like but there were some that might be inappropriate for everyone so we put them over on the Adams Family website so that we don't scare anybody J
 

It’s really not that bad of a process, they just come out and clamp the line between the port in your chest and the bottle that goes in a bag around your waist. Once that is clamped off, she removes the lines from the port and then pulls the needle out.  To make sure that everything is ok she also pushes some saline solution through your port. That is the part that is kind of messy because she has to make sure the port is clear. In order to do THAT she has to draw some blood out of the port and push it back in. I figured you could all live without seeing that!

In retrospect, the first week was not all that bad. I was more nauseous than I remember from the first week of last time but my sister Murphy is correct: “Every cancer is different and every person reacts differently to it” I really need to try and remember that because I will drive myself nuts trying to compare this time with last time. I just need to worry about this time and I need to do that one step at a time.  On the flip side I have not seen any of the other possible side effects yet so that is a good thing!

 

We have taken the first small step and have many steps left to take on this journey, but we are off to a decent start. This is  a journey that nobody takes by choice, but it can become a memorable and important journey in your life if you approach it right. I don't have all the answers on how to do that but I have an idea of how to do that for ME.  So here are some ways I can make this a memorable journey:

 

1.       I won’t ever let it see me scared! I am always in control of my destiny except for those times when God is in control. Between the 2 of us we can figure this out J

2.       I will document what happens to me, what I feel about it, how it affects the other people in my life, etc. I will do this through words, pictures or whatever else I can think of. When I started talking about this journey, I thought it was a way for my family and friends to read about what was going on. I realized that this was only a small reason why I do this. The major reason is that it helps ME to sort out my feelings, my fears and get some semblance of control back in my life.

3.       Lessons Learned: It is truly amazing the way you can cut through the BS and see some things so clearly when you have the possibility of death looking you in the face. I learned some very important Life Lessons the last time I had cancer but not as many as I expect to learn this time. Last time we approached this as more of an “inconvenience” than a life threatening disease. This time it has 100% of my attention 100% of the time and I hope to learn even more this time around. I don't know if any of the stuff I write about what I learned will apply to anyone who reads it, but I am kind of hoping that I do reach someone, somewhere who can “get it” earlier then I “got it”. Hey, you never know what might happen. Just remember to “Play it Forward” J

 

I think that’s it for now. Next Friday I go into the office but I only get 1 of the 4 drugs and I don't have to be on the pump all weekend. So the even number weeks are GOOD weeks. If you want to know if it’s a good week or a bad week for us just figure it out like this:

 

Bad Week: Every other week starting on Friday, September 25^th will be the start of a BAD week

Good Week: Every other week starting on Friday, October 2, will be the start of a GOOD week.

 

Feel free to forward the link to this blog to whoever you want, I say the more the merrier. If people want to “follow” the blog there are instructions on the page that will walk you through that. This means that whenever I make a posting here it will automatically go into your in box too. That way you don't have to check here all the time to see if you missed anything. You have to Sign Up for Google in order to do this and it might be too confusing.    If all you want to do is leave a comment, you can choose “Anonymous” as your option and then put your name in the body of the post. Simple as that.

Take care everyone, thanks for all your prayers and gifts.

Peace and Love,

John