The Onomatopoeic Procedure

Today- well gosh, its now yesterday!- was a very...new. And different. The kind of day you hope you only get once, lest it'd ruin the memory.

I'm in California. Stereotypically, it was sunny today, and I barely needed a sweater. We went on a wonderful outing, and spent some time at a doctors office. A doctor of vein related thingys (okay...there is  a science word I could insert here, only I've clean forgotten it. Blast.), who was very nice. And on time (woah bear.).

It went well! I should start by saying that. The proof is in that I am writing this now! The procedure is simple enough. Wash wash. Snip snip. Push push. Thread thread. Glue-a-dee Glue. See, not so bad?

I had to have an IV in. I'm totally pro at dealing with this now. We can count pinpricks, if you like. Just two, tiny little bruises on the back of my hand, bringing to mind the bite of a little snake. And hardly a mark in the crook of my arm, so little so that it looks like a faint scar! Kodos to her, hunh? Drip drip.- I forgot that in the above onomatopoeic poem- a little saline, and some numbing stuff.

My chest looks GROSS. Not gonna lie. I miss the good ol' days when it was just me, no plastic and cuts and such. The top incision is tiny, half-inch. I wonder what it feels like, cutting through skin with a scalpel? It makes my little waterproof shell and stretchy covering seem rather flimsy and useless, rather like the first drops of rain ripping wholes in an umbrella. Anyways, through this first little incision, I think they slide a little string/tube/wire/whatever down the vein they've found, and down. I don't really know why. Ask a grownup. Now, once they've done whatever it is they've done with that, they make the 'cut'. Its about an inch and a half, give or take a bit of my skin, and that is where it goes. As it is now in me, I suddenly feel awkward talking about it. My little new plastic bit (I'm slowly being bought out and replaced!). Its about the size of a quarter, only round, like those bouncy balls you get out of quarter vending machines in the antechamber of malls. They have to push  it, and less than and inch from the incision. That is very uncomfortable. Force of that magnitude had yet to be felt by that part of my body. Ow. Quite impressive force I might add!

 It feels big under my skin, which is currently stretching to keep up with the new thing. You can feel it from the outside. A ball. A lump. Under the skin. Above 2 thin burgundy lines. Surrounded by a hardened purple tinged layer, which is like skin glue, to hold the skin together. It was stitched, too. Neatly.

Its sensitive. To touch. Or tense my chest muscles. My heart feels huge in my chest, as I consciously will it to beat a little more to the left, farther from the new bits.

Oh I'm on a lot of pain meds. Oh I'm in a lot of pain (generally. today was a bad day all round). So I may not be making the words go together nicely. I took pictures of the wound. I think it is better to have that sort of thing facing you. If I don't look at it, it will be the monster creeping under the bed, the dark shadow in the night, the blackness of midnight, and it will be magnified and blown out of proportion. Everything looks better in the light. I'm debating whether or not to post the pictures. I'm thinking, well, on one hand, if you have to get a port in, maybe you'd like to know? Maybe it would help to see? If it were me, I'd want to know. Its better out there, than dark and wild hidden.

If you are going to get a Port in, know that if you are anxious about it, about the unknown, that it is not as bad as it seems. And I also know that that doesn't help. But, Lidocaine is greeaattt. Yah, it hurts a little after...no...actually it is more just uncomfortable. It feels awkward and unnatural, but damn straight it is!!

It was really hard for me to be able to face this. Blood turns my stomach, even spilled tomato juice. I took this picture.

The truth hurts. It helps, & I'll take it.

“Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.”

~T.S. Eliot