Ports Are Good

Here's some news from Steve.

Friday was a very busy day for Tanya. We woke up early, arrived at the hospital by 7 a.m., filled out the insurance paperwork for the surgery, and finished just in time to sit around in the waiting room. Fortunately, Tanya was in the operating room by 9:30 a.m. The surgery was to install a port to make chemotherapy treatments more comfortable. For those lucky enough not to know what a port is, it’s a small disk approximately the diameter of a quarter, but quite a bit thicker, which is installed under the skin (it appears to be a bump). Ports are used to deliver chemo through a blood vessel making it easier to administer the chemotherapy and to take blood for tests. One of the key benefits to having a port is that there is no more needle poking and misses when the nurse is searching for an acceptable vein. Compared with chemo given through a vein in the arm, it is more efficient, as it is delivered more quickly through a main vein via special needle into the port.