as small as a world and as large as alone, I don’t know why this didn’t show up before, but I...

6:00pm October 25, 2014

I don’t know why this didn’t show up before, but I don’t think it did when I tried to post it. I’ve been having trouble with my iPad tumblr client. So anyway, these are all my cyborg implants as of late.

1. Interstim device, prevents urinary retention by relaxing the pelvic floor muscle and preventing spasticity. I have to use it along with the physical therapy I learned, either one alone doesn’t do the trick.

2. GJ feeding tube for gastroparesis. The J tube allows me to put food water and meds directly into my intestines. The G tube allows me to drain bile and anything else out of my stomach, preventing aspiration. So this prevents both starvation and aspiration at once.

3. Bard PowerPort. A central line that is sort of like a permanent IV. This is because my veins infiltrate at a rate of something like five a day when they’re using them for IVs, and this rapidly becomes a problem. That’s when they can even get a vein to work in the first place, either for an IV or a blood draw. So this thing goes directly into a deep vein near the entrance to my heart, and you can use it like an IV, use it to draw blood, and it can be used with medications that would not be safe to use in a normal IV. So it’s a lot like a PICC line, only permanent and not as prone to infection, not as high-maintenance.

Several people have independently been telling me I’m well on my way to becoming a cyborg now. Which is a really cool way of looking at thiis. I’m still excited about when the bandages are going to fall off, because then I’ll be able to see and feel a lot more clearly what it looks like under my skin.

Oh and it turns out there really are reasons for the coloring and the physical design. They help people tell apart one port from another quickly enough to know what to do with them. Because different ports have different requirements for how to insert the needles, what medications to use, etc. It sounded like this port is one where you don’t need blood-thinning medications, which is a very good thing in my book.