Mount Vernon Hospital Trip

Today I have had to come to Mount Vernon (for the first time ever) to have some blood tests prior to having a Portacath fitted.

In the last few sessions of Chemotherapy my veins have started to complain and one has even collapsed completely! This is hardly surprising as the toxicity of the drugs that have been pumped into my body is pretty high. After my second treatment the vein used became hard and sore (bruise kind of pain) and my 5th treatment required 3 attempts to get a needle in and the 6th took 4!

Before I started Chemo it was mentioned to me about getting a portacath fitted, but it was dismissed due to me being young and my veins are strong so there should be no need for me to have one, but it would be re-evaluated as my treatment goes on.

Seemingly even young, strong veins can’t handle it in all cases and after cycle number 4 when my arms were starting to hurt when i roll my sleeves up (from the pressure on my forearms) I decided to bite the bullet and ask for the consultant to refer me to get a port fitted.

They had no problems in referring me for it as I had another 18 treatments of Herceptin to follow after the chemo and my veins would still struggle with them being used every 3 weeks. The only problem was that it had to be done at Mount Vernon and there was a bit of a wait to get it fitted, which may mean it wouldn’t be done in time for any of my chemo treatments (which obviously it wasn’t).

So I arrived at 2pm for my bloods to be taken, they were expecting me (fab) and a nurse even asked if I was having the port fitted and was I planning on staying the night? (Yes and Yes). Nice and organised, “you’re in bed 7, which is all ready for you. Great :)

Mum and Amber were with me at the time so they took us through to the day room, a cute little room with a couple of sofas and dining table and chairs and a tv & dvd player. Mum left pretty much straight away after I reassured her I’d be fine, then after about 10 minutes I was asked to go over to the building where they do the bloods.

There was another lady that was also having a portacath fitted tomorrow and we were both to get our bloods done at the same time. After chatting with her for about 10 seconds we discovered that she was from Letchworth and had also travelled up this afternoon. We chatted while we waited for our bloods to be taken and I found out that she had had stomach and bowel cancer last year and now they have found it has spread so she is having to have chemo for a second time.

I find it really difficult to talk to people in this situation with their Cancer as I feel so lucky to have had such a light brush with it and had a fairly smooth ride. My positive outlook on everything doesn’t come across so well when you’re talking to someone who quite clearly has a tough situation to deal with. I’m not naive to think that everyone should cope with it in the same way I have and I know that many people have it much much worse than me, but I honestly don’t know how else to behave, and this is why I struggle, as I worry that I dont express empathy very well.

Needless to say I had already planned on catching up with my blog while in hospital so pitched myself up at the table in the day room with my laptop and kept myself to myself for the rest of the afternoon.

The nurse that took my blood was the best blood taker I’ve had all year, it didn’t hurt one little bit when she put the needle in. However she put the blood in the wrong pots so an hour later another nurse (who was nowhere near as gentle) had to take some more!

I was given an information sheet on the portacath when I returned to the ward which was extremely straight forward and made it all much clearer to me, so here are some useful bits to help you, the reader understand too.
The implantable port is a thin, soft plastic tube that is put into the chest and has an opening (port) just under the skin. It allows medicines to be given into the vein or blood to be taken from the vein. The operation to fit it requires 2 small incisions to be made in your upper chest, the first is about 3-4 cm long and is where the port is placed, the second incision goes above this, and is usually less than 1-2cm long. The tube goes directly into a vein in your chest and is then tunnelled under the skin and attached to the port, which is fitted into a space created under the skin.

Shirley (the lady from Letchworth) and I had a talk from one of the nurses about the actual procedure for us and got to see the port itself. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was a lot smaller than I imagined it to be (I’d seen a lady with one at Lister and you could see it under her skin and it looked about the size of a pound coin), this was much smaller – the bit that is directly under the skin is smaller than a 5 pence piece and the nurse said you can’t normally see them once they’re in but people that loose quite a bit of weight after having it inserted can sometimes see it. (so with all my recently added pounds mine may well become visible over time!).

We’ve been told that we’ll be given something to relax us in the morning then taken for an xray at about 9am. We’ll have a jab of pethadine in our bottoms and have a local anasthetic just before. The procedure itself takes about 1 hour and we should be free to go home pretty much straight away if we feel ok.

The ward here is so relaxed, if it wasn’t for the typical hospital smell I could almost mistake it for a budget hotel (I’m not expecting much for the comfort of the bed but they gave me ice cream for pudding with dinner so I’m a happy bunny).