For years I have always said that Apple products are just light years ahead of anything else and I fully switched my elegance from Microsoft after realising that this was just the 'norm' and that I used those products just because everyone else was doing it. It was a leap of fait at first but after realising that you can virtualise all of your favourite windows software and have that stuff anyway, life became a breeze, almost a zen moment on enlightenment. Today I can't be found very far away from an iMac or a MacBook and if its very bad I usually have an iPad or an iPhone at hand. I never get caught without an iPhone and can usually get by with everything I have to do.
I know this post is meant to be about the Port-A-Cath test run but I decided to blog whilst in bed as I'm feeling a bit sickie after the chemo yesterday. The reason that Apple came to mind was that the room was dark when I picked up the laptop and I was straining to see the keyboard. I knew that the lights in the room are fairly dim and I couldn't really be bothered getting out of bed to turn anything on as I'm still a bit sick and in a bit of pain. Anyway, I have never used this feature on the machine but remembered that the keyboard is back lit. Now if I was on any other machine I can guarantee you I'd need to install drivers or use some crapo spam ware software from the vendor or do a bit of research to understand how this feature would work. I can also guarantee that however the implementation of such feature was done, there would be something about it that irritated me. Don't get me wrong, I'm open to the challenge but the challenge now days is getting words out, not faffing about with the technology in order to get it to work. So with the mac book in front of me, the keyboard very dim I remember that there were keys above the numbers 5 and 6 that had an interesting sun rise picture on them. Pressed one and the keyboard dimmed, pressed the other and fully lit keyboard, how simple was that.
So the Port-A-Cath experience has been very Apple like in my experience so far. I was absolutely terrified of the procedure and was actually violently sick the morning that I was due to have it in. This proved to be ill founded and as I have written the sedation given was enough for me to be awake during the work but strong enough that I can't really remember anything about it. I left the hospital with a butterfly needle attached and I thought that too would be an ordeal which it really wasn't. I was aware that this was in place and it did keep me awake thinking that I may disturb the arrangement but there was no pain and no discomfort directly caused by the operation or the protruding needle. They had left the needle in by the way in order to help the nurses the next day. Sometimes the skin tissue can become damaged during the procedure that it is difficult to get a new needle attached so the Dr leaves one in advance if the chemo administration is in the next couple of days.
I turned up at Ross Hall on Friday 24th with my shinny new Port-A-Cath and a protruding fitting. Today Sheila was attending to me and she immediately hooked me up for the Herceptin which was over in no time. Where as a normal visit would consist of at least 30 minutes faffing about with a cannula insertion there was nothing more to do than plug me in this time. I did get a small dressing around the port in order that no movement would pull on the needle but this was nothing compared to the layers of tape I usually had with the cannula. So the rest of the day was pretty much the same, one infusion after another but the nice thing was that during direct needle infusions, there was no need to work close to the cannula which was ofter painful. Instead the long line coming from the butterfly needle was used and there was no pressure on any part of my body so no pain at all. The last infusion was a 3 hour long bag and again this passed in no time. Prior to the use of the port, I would have been is total agony at this part, praying for the cannula to be removed as the chemo drugs would have been shredding the veins in my arms to pieces. The fact that the drugs were going straight into an artery meant that there was less chance of damage and that the chemo drugs had less of a journey before being distributed normally.
So to summarise, the Port-A-Cath is a product that could have been developed by Apple where as the cannula is a product probably designed by Bill Gates on a bad day. If offered a port I would thoroughly recommend it and don't use the procedure to weigh up your decision as it's not even a thing, just another part of your day.
In terms of the chemo, this round seems to be less severe than the last but that isn't something unexpected as I have changed the regime and generally these treatments are meant to be cumulative with the side effects so I imagine another round of EOX would have killed me for sure. There are definitely side effects with this new look of rocket fuel however as this morning I awoke in a pool of sweat and was shivering uncontrollably at one point. I am taking double the dose of steroids however and have less anti sickness stuff to take. A good thing is that I don't have the neuropathy stuff that I had before so far but will see what the next couple of days brings. I also had the district nurse out today who administered a patch on my left tumour which has now truly broken through the skin and also gave me an injection which should help my immune system. Again I was on tender hooks all day whilst watching the rugby, waiting for her to come with the needle as this was now destined for my stomach but in truth it was nothing and there was no real pain to talk about.
So on that bombshell I'm off for some well deserved rest and will see if my stomach can manage some food later on.
