So much for an "off week"

This was supposed to be my good week, the week between chemo treatments when cancer moved to the back burner and I felt human again. I did feel human, but cancer still had a starring role.

On Monday, I had to go in for a dye test to see what was happening with my recalcitrant chemo port. The port disc is the size of a quarter and sits below the skin in my upper left chest. A tube running off to the side of the disc is supposed to feed directly into large vein. In my case, the tube makes a complete loop around the port, before feeding into the vein. This is probably what's making the chemo treatments so sluggish and time consuming.

"Never seen that before," said Dr. K, who did the dye test. From there, it was a series of phone calls to convey the test results and schedule to surgery to fix the port. So, Monday I'll be going under the knife again to, most likely, get a new port. Because chemo's supposed to start the next day, the surgeon will place the chemo needle during surgery so it's in place for Tuesday's third round of chemo.

Not a major complication, by any means, but enough aggravation to be depressing. How depressing? I spent 45 minutes wandering a department store's super sale with a 30 percent off coupon in my pocket and couldn't find a thing to buy. That's just not like me.

Nothing's ever easy!

My chemo port is misbehaving. Today, it would give no blood (so I had to have a stick in the arm), and unless I was flat on my back, the chemo drip slowed to a random drop every few seconds. Normally, being told to lie down would be music to my ears. However, even good things like recliners have their limits and two hours flat on my back is mine.

Phyllis pointed out that a gentleman who was getting the exact same chemo as me started a half hour after I did and finished  a half hour ago. I still have 800 ml to go, plus another smaller bag of something else after that. I've already been here four hours!

So the next adventure in my treatment will be next week (my "off" week) to get some dye injected into the port so that any problems in my line will be visible. Phyllis says I may need a new chemo port, which probably means another surgery. But if it speeds things along, it will be worth it.