Is this USB compatible?

My veins are at least as mean and wicked as I am. They just like the smell of cold sweat and the sounds of desperation that nurses and doctors make when they have to draw blood from me. Because everytime someone approaches me with a syringe my veins decide to just go over there, you know, just around that corner, where no one can find them. I mean sure, I also found it quite funny when Dr. Ranjit was almost close to tears when he had to get blood samples from me in the middle of the night but the incompetent tries were also always connected with pain and bruises for me. And THAT I didn´t like.

And you know what is a very bad combination? Bad veins and chemo. Because there is this thing called extravasation (if you want to google it please do yourself the favor and don´t click on the "Picture" button! o0). This means that the injection that was supposed to go into your bloodstream is going into the surrounding tissue. And do you know what is very bad to have in your tissue? Toxic chemo meds!

So to end this misery with my bad veins for all of us I had a so-called port installed. This is a little device that is sitting right beneath my skin under my right collar bone:

That is how the port is installed under the skin and how it is used.

A catheter connects the port to a vein which makes it easily possible to inject any kind of drugs almost directly into the heart or to also draw blood. In "sleeping mode", that means in between treatments, you almost don´t see anything from outside. You can feel the port as a small hump on my chest but that´s it (yeah, you can touch it if you´re that curious, just ask! ;)). But when the treatment starts and I get my everyday blood samples and infusions a needle is inserted into the port which can stay in for a week. Then you can see a little tube from the outside where the infusions will be connected with.

The port was installed in a small surgery (lucky me under full anesthesia :)) and I´m very glad that I have it because it makes everything way easier and safer. On Wednesday I will start my next round of CHOEP in the oncology doctor´s office here in the city. So then, when the doctor puts in my needle, it´s again time to call out

O´ZAPFT IS! :)

 (and yes I did that the first time in the hospital and my doc was very irritated by it, dunno why...)