Well, this turned out to be an even easier day then I expected. Judy Anderson went down to Sloan Kettering with me, the traffic was light, and things were on schedule at the hospital. So I actually was taken down to the Interventional Radiology Department on time at 11 o’clock. And I was back up before 12 o’clock. They let me walk both ways.
In between, I was asked the usual questions by the staff in the IR department, and met Dr. Covey (SP?), a young woman who also did my kidney biopsy way back in August, 2005, and who is a bit of a comedian. I reminded her of that, and that we’d spent that time telling jokes back and forth while she was locating my kidney via CAT scan, and jabbing me.
The mediport removal took no more then 20 minutes, and all I was given was a local anesthetic – no sedation. If I’d been given a sedative it would have delayed my discharge two or three hours, so I opted to not have one. With the local anesthetic I couldn’t feel anything anyway, beyond a bit of a tugging feeling.
Dr. Covey said that the mediport is designed to have scar tissue build up and sort of graft to it, and cutting it away is what takes the most time.
Unfortunately, they wouldn’t give me the mediport as a momento. Covey said it was medical waste, and by law had to be disposed of in a certain way (As Judy said later, disposed of so it would wash up on the Jersey shore). She was pretty emphatic about it. Evidently other people do ask. I mean, I carried it around under my skin for 105 weeks, aren’t I entitled to it?
However I found a mediport picture online, and this is just what mine looked like when Dr. Covey showed it to me:
The tube that comes off it is five or six inches long, and is threaded through the superior vena cava. The picture shows just about the real size. And they cost between 700 and a thousand dollars.
Here’s a little narcissism on my part – before and after mediport photos taken in the last two days:
I was home today at around 2 o’clock. My only activity restrictions are no exercising with weights until the weekend and when showering don’t scrub the wound area for the next week or so.
So a good day! As I wrote yesterday, the physicians would have discouraged me from having the mediport removed if they had any feeling that I might be needing more chemotherapy any time soon.
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