Port Removal

I wonder now why I didn't write about my port removal procedure.

Yeah, it was a busy summer.  Yeah, we were at Grand Lake the weekend after it came out, so there were other things to share.  But I think now that I just felt so done with medical appointments that I figured anyone who has been reading along surely also felt done with them, too.

But some funny things happened.  It'd be a shame to forget them. . .

We travel back to mid-July.  I knew already that Mayfield would not be there to cross the finish line with us because the Army--in its persistent crusade to make its best people hate their employer--had moved up Mayfield's deployment date from September to late May.  With less than a week's notice.  (Which means he and his wife had to cancel their vacation to Germany, too!)

No one's asking for violins, here.  I'm telling you that in order to tell you this: In the midst of last-minute preparations and the intense pressure couples endure before saying goodbye for un-natural lengths of time, Mayfield both faxed in paperwork to assure my continuity of care when our insurance switched from active duty to retired coverage AND he spoke with the surgeon at the hospital he recommended to remove my port.

So.  One last round of applause for my awesome surgeon. 

The guy he recommended got the nod for one single reason:  I wanted to keep my port.  Patients are not allowed, by regulation, to keep their ports.  But Dr. Golden (that's a code name) has selected 06, and Colonels are kind of. . . not messed with in hospitals.  Colonels have already passed 20 years, and so they are "working for half-pay" and generally could be earning much more outside the military.

They don't get fired for letting patients keep ports. 

I went to my appointment with Dr. Golden on a Tuesday afternoon with the expectation that I could get on his schedule in 2 to 3 weeks.  (That was the time when I felt a painful lump and was assured it was scar tissue and not returning cancer.) 

Dr. Golden is a quiet, little man.  Friendly enough.  Not cold.  Not super warm.  Very clinical.  As I sat there answering his standard questions, I thought, "Thank You, God, that I did not have to experience this past year with this surgeon." 

Dr. Golden was quiet for several seconds, after the last answer.  Then he said, "Are you free tomorrow?"  At which the Golden-o-meter shot up about 17 points. Tell me what time to be here. . .

Bryan drove me down and stayed with the kids in the waiting room.  On the way to the office, I ran into a woman in the corridor who was leaving pediatrics.  I stopped and said, "I know you. . ."  It was Su, a friend from Korea I had known 5 years earlier.  Her husband is now stationed in the Springs. 

Well.  It had been 5 years.  We hadn't been close--just knew each other from a Bible study on Post.  How much do you say in a 2 minute conversation?  On one hand, there was the question of "What are you doing in a hospital?"  On the other hand, wasn't the fact that I had breast cancer now just another piece of my history?  No longer 'What is going on with you?' and how often do we need to tell each other 'What was going on'?

Still.  Good to see her.  And what were the chances?. . .

Once I checked in, I was taken to a room across the hall from the offices and exam rooms I'd been sitting in all year and this procedure room didn't look too different.  Better lighting, of course.  More stuff.  A crash cart. . . 

The nurse assisting was a man.  Some middle-aged guy.  Very sociable.  Told me a funny story about Mayfield. 

[What's that?  You want to hear it?  Well. . .  So Mayfield was doing some kind of stitching and he left the thread on the body.  The nurse's words: "And I asked him the wrong way--because what I meant was, 'Which procedure are you going to use at this point because there's 2 different ways to do it?' But what I said was, 'Are you going to leave that there?'  And he turned to me and said, totally stone-faced, 'I've done these before. . .'"

Heh heh.  That is not a Mayfield story.  That is a surgeon story.  These people have to be like this.  How else are they going to cut human bodies open and muck around with their insides?]

The nurse turned on a soft-pop music station and assured me that most patients found this palatable.  I said, "Hey--whatever Dr. Golden wants to listen to!"

Which prompted the nurse to tell a Dr. Golden story.

[What's that?  OK, OK. . .]

Following a 4 hour surgery, this nurse witnessed the surgical team exit the OR with eyes rolling and great exhaustion in their step.  "That took forever," they complained.

4 hours?  That's nothing!

"No, no, no," they explained.  "Dr. Golden had one CD going the entire time: the Oklahoma! soundtrack.  The entire time!"

I badly wanted to talk about Oklahoma! with Dr. Golden during the procedure because I payed the part of Aunt Eller at the pinnacle of my theater career.  But I didn't want to get the nurse into trouble with the doctor, and how else would I know to bring it up if the nurse hadn't been gossipping?

Here's something interesting about that afternoon.  I was unclothed, of course, from the waist up as I lay awake on the table.  With two men in the room.  And I didn't feel an ounce of self-consciousness. 

The nurse sat to my right.  The port was in my left.  Dr. Golden flipped open the surgical fabrics to isolate the work area and then he settled them on me.  He examined the scar from the the port installation and after some time, commented, "You have some abrasion here."

I popped my head up to look, the fabric was in the way, so I pressed it down to better see, whence he said, "Don't touch that."

Too late, of course.

He had to re-dress the area with a new set of sterile fabrics.  I could not help but comment, after apologizing, "You know, when you opened the first set, I saw particles of dust puff off of them in the light.  So, really, how sterile could this fabric be?"

He said, simply, "Those were sterile particles of dust."

I do not know if he was joking. . .

But none of this stopped me from chatting with him throughout.  Why does he stay in the Army?  Because he likes taking care of soldiers.  And their families.  Somehow we got to talking about pets and he does not have cats, but his wife does and he lives with them.  And where he was from.  And where we went to school.  And on with all kinds of other chit chat.

Which was interrupted by his statement to the nurse, "I'm going to need a BOVIE."  The nurse hopped up, got something out, told me it wouldn't hurt, but to be aware that it would be very cold, so don't sit up from the shock.

Then he slapped a very cold adhesive patch to my right chest wall and plugged me in. "You might see smoke," the nurse said, "Don't worry."

"Smoke?"  I asked.  Silence.
"Are you plugging that end in?" I asked. 
"Just grounding you," he said. 
Oh.  OK.  Right.

Wait.  Grounding me????

Then I heard sizzlin' and poppin'.  And I forced myself to stop thinking about it.  I learned later what I suspected, and why the nurse had not done much to explain what a BOVIE is.

It's a cauterizing tool. 

You can google that if you want to.  I have easy-queasy sisters to think about here.

I could have done the whole thing as an out-patient, you know, with the use of a knock-me-out drug.  But as much as I love a good ether story, I didn't want to have to go through a 2 hour check-in appointment on one day and then show up for an early report time for the actual procedure.  I wanted convenience. 

And I wanted to know what it's like to be awake while someone cuts your skin open and digs a hunk of titanium out of it. 

Answer:  Not as horrifying as you'd expect. 

I couldn't see anything.  I felt several pin pricks when he injected the local anesthesia and then had no way to know when or what he was slicing.  The messing around he did in there sounded a little like. . . a dog chewing chicken.  There was definitely the sound of sinew disturbed.  And the BOVIE, well, that made sounds, too.

At one point, Dr. Golden remarked that it should be out, but wasn't coming out.  Then I felt--and reported--a sharp pulling from the inside at the farthest right point of where I imagined the port sat.

Aha.  Another stitch.

Moments later, it was out--which I didn't feel at all--and moments after that, I was stitched shut.  Moments after that, it was thank you and good-bye, Dr. Golden.  I haven't seen him since.

The nurse flushed the port out for me.  It's purple.  Kind of iridescent.  Heavy.  Shaped like a rounded triangle, almost like a heart.  I keep it on my bathroom counter with the ambition of having a jeweler turn it into a key chain.  For now, I like seeing it every morning, there, on the counter, unused. 

I put it into a little bag and walked back into the waiting room. The kids had no idea what a big moment it was.  For Bryan and me, it was the kind of moment you couldn't say anything about.  He just hugged me.

Then Josh started crying over not being allowed to finish watching the cartoon on the waiting room screen and Gemma wanted to know what was in the bag.  And the moment was over as the rest of our life beckoned us.