Boob is a Weekend Word

Pain in the Port

May 20th, 2011

I changed my mind. This port doesn’t feel like a marble under my skin. It feels like I was shot with a gun loaded with bullets about 3/4 inch diameter and it remains lodged under my skin. I have a hematoma about the size of a golf ball. I have been assured it is normal. I wish I would have had this done during my initial mastectomy so I would be hooked up to IV pain meds constant.

I had a friend, Jennifer Gonyea, that went through this whole process about 2.5 years ago and we had dinner a few weeks ago. I now remember her telling me the port placement and presence was worse than anything else she experienced during the whole ordeal of treating her breast cancer. I thought she was probably off her rocker thinking a little nickle sized piece of metal in your arm could be worse than having breasts removed and reconstructed in multiple surgeries. Well, Jen, I now “get it”. You are 100% right – this is the worse part so far. I’ll be immensely grateful if this is actually the worse part.

Luckily I have a fabulous surgeon who has taken a liking to me and got me some better pain medications. I’m now taking two 10mg lortabs every six hours. Works for about two hours, then I just suffer through the other four. But Dr. Cody Gunn is so great to me. He called in the higher dosage lortab stat! I can’t say enough great things about the super surgeon. Dr. Gunn, this blog post is dedicated to you! But really, the nurses in the department where I had this done said I might want to take some Ibuprofen for a few days afterwards. Are they freaking kidding me? Ibuprofen to handle this pain? That’s like trying to clean up the BP oil spill with a measuring cup!