Port in the starboard

Today was supposed to be - at least I thought it would be - the day to begin chemo. Alas, twas not to be. Seems that the marrow/bone biopsy samples are still under review. I didn't find this out until around 4:30pm, so I mostly frittered away the day in Charlottesville central library trying to get/maintain vpn connectivity. It was not the most productive of efforts.

I say 'mostly frittered' because early this morning, I did take the first step into becoming a cybernetic organism. I must emphasize that it was a very small step, since it only involved inserting a device called a 'Port' into the right side of my chest. A port is a titanium disk, about the diameter of a nickel, which has tubes which can be run directly into some rather large veins in my neck. The use of this is intended to prevent the chemo drugs from hurting veins in my arms which would otherwise need to be used.

I've been assured by several sources that this augmentation gets me nowhere near the usual $6 million dollars necessary for super speed, hearing, or jumping abilities. I'm still uncertain as to whether Cigna will be up for paying for these changes when I request them.

Thanks to some great techs, this change went largely unnoticed by me. The techs were adept at administering to me a sedative and a chemical called fentanyl, which left me in a largely in an incoherent state. To you wise guys out there, this was truly an especially incoherent state. I awoke to find a gash in my chest and a nickel size lump over my right breastbone. The sedative and pain medication wore off quickly and have left me with a delightful ache in my chest. It joins the pain placed there a week ago (prior to the initiation of this blog) which was created by the initial biopsy of the mediasteinal tumor. Ouch!

My hope is that this last step will get us started on the chemo tomorrow. I gotta tell you guys, I'm pretty much done waiting.