Port Placement and Chemo . . . in Pictures

My sister, Stacy, looking beautiful at 6 a.m., took me to the hospital while Dave stayed home to get all the kiddos off to school. Being with Stacy is always fun, even when it's 6 a.m. and you're in a hospital bed. Dave joined me later.

I am all smiles because I've been told this 'procedure-not-surgery' is a piece of cake. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

This is to show you my new skin color to go along with my new hair color. It is burnt sienna. Here you see the dressing on the upper incision, and you see the tube sticking out of the lower incision where the port is. My reaction after experiencing the procedure under the influence of loopy juice was typical: violent chills and tearful breakdown. Whoever did the tape job on my dressings must have been trained in some industrial/governmental complex because a full third of my torso was taped so tight, it took the infusion nurse today 20 minutes to undo it all.

But I got some cool bracelets out of the deal!

And some cool meds. Well, I thought they'd be cool meds. One of these bad boys made me so sick that I spent some quality time bowing to the porcelain god, all the while panicking that my retching would dislodge my tubing or otherwise compromise my port. Not fun. Instant Karma my foot!

Where you see bandage is bandage, and where you don't see bandage is tape. Clear tape. Stuck all over my nethers. Ever tried scratching an itch through tape? You know what it feels like to carry an infant in one of those strap-on-the-front-of-you carriers? It felt like that, except instead of my skeletal system supporting the load, just my skin did. I did NOT sleep well last night.  Pain and fear never fail to yield copious tears.

But I made it to the Taj Mahazj today for chemo anyway!
C! H! E-M-O! Hook me up and let it flow!

See what I did there with my scarf (knitted by Stacy)? I made the breast canser symbol ribbon! This chair and I are going to be great friends, I can tell.

Another look at the taped torso taking twenty tough minutes to untangle.

Chillaxing with a cocktail...
Not pictured here are the great games Dave and I played. He beat me at Scopa, and I beat him at Bananagrams!

This is the cocktail. Pretty, right? I pee red now.

After the lengthy untaping, this is what I am left with. Battered and bruised but on my way to bald, beautiful and benign! (Incidentally, this is not my whole breast you're seeing. I just noticed that the way the shirt is surrounding it makes it look like this is some nippleless version of a boozie. It is just the upper portion of my chestata so don't worry.)