power port

There is a port under my skin. It makes it more fun if I imagine it is some sort of machine (I am now bionic!), but really it's just four small parts, two rubber, one metal, and one bright purple plastic. It is, however, delightfully called Power Port, and comes with a purple keychain, rubber bracelet, and wallet card, all to remind me to remind my doctors and any security personnel I may encounter that I have a port -no, no, a Power Port!- which could set off metal detectors and airport scanners. I guess if I ever wanted to sneak a pair of nail clippers onto an airplane, this is my chance.
It makes a quarter-sized lump on my chest about a half an inch tall, an inch below my collar bone. There is another incision in my neck just above my clavicle that was used to guide the insertion into the vein. Wearing any shirts but turtlenecks just got awkward. Now, in addition to trying to hide the hollowness where my breast used to be, I have this strange protrusion to contend with. Oh wardrobe, you left me woefully unprepared for the days when my chest would become the site of much dismantling, removing, stitching, gluing, and implanting. I bought all my shirts with the optimistic presumption that it wouldn't often be my goal to conceal my collar bone and the rather un-sultry few inches of skin directly below it. So it goes. Cancer is rife with unanticipated inconveniences.
I recently went to the local prosthetics shop and found that the process of getting a prosthesis is less straightforward than I anticipated. First, I had to be measured. Then, I was handed catalogs full of pictures of bras that mostly look like the unsexiest, most medical garments you can imagine, many of which are modeled by women old enough to be my mother, and selected the very few that didn't look that far outside the usual purview of my taste in undergarments. "Of course! Those are the newest ones. They're really getting better about making them... more attractive," said the friendly certified prosthesis fitter. After that, I had a strange, embarrassingly tearful, conversation with her about what mattered most to me in a synthetic breast. My tears ended abruptly when she told me that losing a body part -any part- is comparable to losing a loved one. A t-chart appeared in my mind: my breast on one side and my grandmother on the other. "Oh, no. It's not that bad." And I remembered I was in a prosthetics shop, where other people went for new legs and hands, and how lucky I was to still have those really important bits. The fitter put in an order for all the bras and silicone breast forms, told me to call her if I needed anything and I'm sure she meant it in the absurdly generous way where she'd talk me out of a teary episode again if I needed it. In a couple weeks I go back to see if any of them fit properly. If yes, I get to go home with my selections. If not, we start all over again. Fingers crossed for success on the first try, though I have a new personal policy of never getting my hopes about anything ever because it doesn't pan out well for me when I do. I was even a little bummed after this appointment as my previous conversations with the kind folks at the shop led me to believe I'd be leaving with my new pretend boob that very day. FYI: A prosthetics shop just looks like a doctor's office and there is nothing cool about it at all.
Interesting discovery: I can wear my old bras, but with no breast on the right side, they tend to ride up a little over my hollow, making it a bit uncomfortable. I found that the small bead-filled hand-warmer pouch my dear friend made is a perfect weight to keep the bra in place and properly filled so that under a tank top (which sits high enough on my chest to cover the gap between my chest wall and the cup), it looks convincingly like I have two breasts that are the same size!
Back to the port. I recently learned the following interesting, horrifying fact: In rare cases, one of the chemo medications I'll be receiving can leak through a vein (as in, seep/burn through the vein wall) and cause a CHEMICAL BURN FROM THE INSIDE OUT that could require
skin grafting. This doesn't happen often because doctors administer the
medicine in water to avoid said vein-melting, but if for whatever reason
the medication isn't evenly distributed in the water, burns can still happen. It can also happen if a needle inserted into the vein accidentally pokes clear through it. More common, and way less terrifying, is the simple reality that the chemo meds are corrosive and tough on the body so when they're injected into smaller veins in the arms repeatedly, veins tend to show wear by collapsing and shrinking. The port's rubber top is a safe place for the doctors to inject the meds without having to worry about leakage and the white rubber tube tunnels the meds safely (if creepily) into a major vein in my chest! making for a more direct delivery of medication to my bloodstream with lower risk of vein damage. A doctor will just feel on the top of the protruding port for three tiny bumps that mark the edges of the rubber injection pad, center the needle in between them, and set up the iv there on my chest. Science. Weird.
I was scared heading into the procedure because they use the same combination of sedative and pain killer that was used for the egg harvest for which I was assured there that I would feel little and remember less, and that just wasn't true. I spent the whole procedure quite aware, so the idea that I would be just as aware while a tube was pushed into my vein and a doctor inserted a device into my chest sounded alarming. "Use a lot of those meds. Seriously. I don't want to be able to talk," was my repeated directive to the nurse at my iv. She kindly delivered and I woke up as the doctor applied the last of the bandages to the sound of my own soft snoring. If only sleep came so easily during the healing process...
My first chemo appointment is at 8:30 Wednesday morning. I'm nervous in a way that feels inarticulate, hard to place.