2:55pm September 23, 2014

I’m getting a port!!!!!!!

At least, that’s what it sounds like from the phone call that I just got.

I thought I was going to have to meet with a doctor and justify it to them, but it sounds like my doctor provided all the justification they needed and they’re just setting up the anesthesia team and getting the date scheduled.

I know the risks with a port, but for years I’ve had IV nurses insisting that I needed a port. Every time I go to the hospital I either end up with a PICC line, or all my veins get so messed up that they can’t get any medication in. My doctor had been trying to put off getting me a port, but after this last hospitalization (in which some idiot tried to put vancomycin into a tiny finger vein, and the actual IV nurses literally gave up and said “stop giving her meds because we can’t find any more veins”) he has realized that this is going to be an ongoing problem.

So hopefully everything goes smoothly with this. I know ports carry a lot of risks, but so does using up every vein in my body and having to do a port installation in an emergency scenario. I’d rather have the port ready to go and able to be accessed when necessary, rather than always struggle to find veins, always the same veins, always having them blow or infiltrate, always always always, and never having a single vein last even a whole day long. My veins hate me. And the more times I’m hospitalized, the less cooperative my veins get.

So sometime in the next couple of months I should be getting a port installed. And while I’m nervous, of course, I’m also relieved. Because it’s really scary going into a hospitalization not knowing if they’ll be able to find a working vein. And it’s really obnoxious trying to convince them that yes, I know what it feels like when my vein’s about to infiltrate, and that no, it’s not just that I’m “sensitive”, it really does hurt that badly.

And I know that for this particular doctor to finally say yes to a port means it’s serious. Because he hates ports, he hates “intervention” in general, he’s very conservative about treatment, and he would never sign the order, much less try to persuade other doctors to give me a port, if there weren’t a damn good reason by now. And I think this last hospitalization has shown him, I’m never going to have this life where I’m not in the hospital periodically, I’m never going to be free of these medical procedures that involve IVs and infusions and stuff, this is going to be part of my life forever and I need equipment that will make it work for me.

Now I just have to hope with everything in me that there’ll be no complications. Because that’s the last thing I need, infections and blood clots and the like. I have to admit I’m afraid. But at the same time, I’m relieved, so very relieved. I’ve needed a port for far longer than this. Better late than never.

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