I had a loooong afternoon. I got my 9th radiation treatment behind me. Im definitely starting to look sunburned and feeling it. After that, I went to meet with my medical oncologist. All my blood work looks great. My tumor marker was perfect. Under 38 is considered normal; mine was 13. I’ve lost 20 of the 30 pounds I gained from chemo. My hair is juuuust starting to grow, so I have some peach fuzz. And the doc says he fully expects me to beat this and to make the 10-year milestone. He has requested surgery for me so that I can have my port removed. That’s a milestone I’ve been waiting for. So thats all great news. I feel like Im 16 radiation treatments away from being able to SCREAM from the rooftops that I kicked cancer’s ass. He wanted to repeat some blood work, including the tumor marker, which hell be testing frequently in the coming months. So he asked two RNs if they would please draw blood from my port. The needle used for the port is quite big (huge, really) and it hurts, but I figured it would give the veins in my arm a break. One last big stick and I would be done with the damned thing. Sadly, the first RN tried to get the port to work but couldnt. As she tried, repeatedly flushing it with saline and heparin, her sterile technique went to hell. It looked quite gory, with multiple tubes and syringes with blood in them all over the place, but not enough for the blood tests. So she turned to my arm. First she tried the back of my hand but after multiple sticks and re-sticks only succeeded in creating a hematoma the size of a quarter that still hurts quite a bit. The other, who was more experienced and a bit frustrated with the first, intervened and managed to draw blood from my arm with one stick. I spent as much time with these two nurses, getting repeatedly poked, as I did with the doctor. Yep, good times on the oncology ward. :-(
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 03:43:19 +0000
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