Pre-Surgery Tests

After all my appointments on Wednesday, Thursday was my surgical port placement. Earlier in the week, my family and Dr. Mikkelson and I decided that with all of the treatment that I would be undergoing in the near future, a mediport would be a good idea. A mediport is a device that is implanted in my chest directly under the skin that can be accessed by needles with little pain. Mediports are typically used when someone like me doesn't have very good veins.

So my mother, father and I arrive at the hospital that morning for the surgery, but first we have to go get an Echocardiogram done on my heart. Chemotherapy is very stressful on your body, and thus can sometimes damage your heart. The Echo was done to get a baseline, so that in the future, any issues with my heart can be compared to the initial test. The Echo is basically an ultrasound of your heart. Unfortunately, the tech who was doing the test couldn't get a great picture from a certain angle, so she had to call in reinforcements. The reinforcements consisted of a woman that was about 5'2". I thought in the back of my head, what is she going to do that the giant next to me can't do? Well as she was digging in to find my heart, I wouldn't doubt that they were also able to get a picture of my brain with how hard she was pressing the ultrasound wand into my chest. If my breast wasn't already inflamed because of the cancer, it would have probably been black and blue the next day!

After the Echo, I was sent up to day surgery where I would wait until my surgery, and also have an EKG done. The EKG took about two minutes and it was over. Now that is my kind of test!

Once the EKG was done, the nurse in the holding area came to put in my IV. Yeah right. She first tries my right arm, and sees that is where the techs yesterday had my IV and also ripped my skin off with the tape they had used to hold the IV in place. So she graciously decides to move to my left arm instead. She inserts the needle, starts fishing around for the vein and no luck. So, now she moves to my left hand, seeing as how the vampires (the people my mother and I lovingly refer to who always come to get your blood for tests, etc.) got a vein in my right hand. So my nurse has me hang my hand down, and she again sticks the needle in and starts fishing around. After a few minutes, she says she is going to stop and clean up and leave it to the nurses in the surgical waiting room put it in. I think that is fine, not realizing that the reason she is doing that is she completly blew my vein and I was thus bleeding all over the floor of my hospital room. What a lovely way to start the day!