I remember standing in the hallway at work, which is the only place one can receive phone calls in that building. It was my ‘nurse navigator’ – a person assigned to me by… well I’m not quite sure – the hospital, the insurance company? who knows. At any rate, she was rattling off some cancer information, telling me I was going to have to have chemotherapy and that I was going to have to have a port put in my neck.

That wasn’t entirely correct but that’s what she said. A port put in my neck!?!?!? I cried in the parking lot – which was a theme central to this whole cancer experience. Crying in parking lots.

I hung up and left work early. I envisioned me walking around looking like Frankenstein, but bald. A bald Frankenstein with those things poking out of my neck.

(I do like that hair though and I almost have enough to make that style work!)

While the port was not in my neck and I’m told they’re a real game-changer as far as treatments go, I’ll be verrrrrry anxious to get it out.

The port is a medical device under one’s skin these days (I think they used to be on top of the skin which would be awful – having to keep it clean and such). You go in for a quick procedure, they knock you out, place this port just below the collarbone and it runs directly into your vein and straight into your heart – that beautiful pump then sends the chemo meds throughout your body.

Seems almost barbaric, doesn’t it? Sending all that right to the heart?

To be honest, I still had no idea what they were talking about and, as odd as it sounds, I didn’t really have time to Google much before my procedure (though I had figured out by that point that it wasn’t in my neck)

So here it was.

I woke up with this thing under my skin.

You can see the top part is where it goes into my vein, yes you can feel it. The bottom part is that port thing. I hated it immediately. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, I worried about hugging people. And it iiiiiiiiiiitched! That first weekend maybe for a week I thought I was going to lose my mind. It just itched. All the time. All… the… time.

That part did calm down. I put my numbing cream on for my treatments as having them poke a needle into it is less than pleasant. And there I sat.

There’s the blessed port working for me I guess. I hated it. It made me feel like a cancer patient, which I know I was, but I hated it. Every single nurse tells me how lucky I am to have one. I guess getting chemo through your arms veins just ruins them and your veins can be difficult for nurses to find so that makes it even worse – more pokes.

As the summer dragged on, my annoyance with the port did too. Every single bra strap just rubbed and rubbed and rubbed on it. It was very uncomfortable. When I’d talk to the nurses they’d all shrug and say ‘Yea well you’re thin so it pokes out more.’ That was the answer- that was all anyone could give me. No one offered solutions, no one helped – they just told me how lucky I was to have one.

With desperation being the mother of invention, I found myself in the foot care aisle at the grocery store. I had to find something that could protect this damn port from my bra straps and a bandaid wasn’t enough.

Enter the callous cushion. Ridiculous, right? Also brilliant. I put one on the port, slapped a bandaid over the top and my bra strap sat over the top of that damn thing and I couldn’t feel it anymore. Of course, it added to the port bulge under my shirt and I was continually worried about my shirt gaping at any point and someone seeing a callous cushion stuck to my chest. But you can see here that bra seam, RIGHT on the port, was just unbearable otherwise.

As the year has worn on, I’ve gotten bras that do not have a seam there and that has helped tremendously. As any self-respecting woman knows, buying new bras is a pain and not cheap. For female port-sporters, I LOVE the Revolution bra from Knix – NO seams!

Here I am on a lovely summer patio enjoying a lovely glass of wine. And here’s what’s gong on under my shirt.

It’s miserable.

And it’s coming to an end! As my RN sister said, “The happiest patients I have are the ones coming in for port removal.”

I’m hoping that’ll happen this month.