My Cancer Journey

Having the port, port-a-cath, was a good decision for me. It provided access to a vein easily so that a nurse did not have to find one every three weeks when I had my treatments. She just needed to find the port and put the needle through my skin. It had a catheter connected to it that accessed a good vein below my left collarbone. It worked perfectly.  Tuesday, January 14, 2025, four weeks after my last Kadcyla treatment, my surgeon removed the purple heart, my port. The port had not hurt, or really bothered me much, but I did not want it in me any longer than I had to.  If you do not use the port for infusions, you need to go to the cancer center to have it flushed with a saline solution every three months to prevent infections. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but in order to do it, the nurse needs to access it as if you are going to get an infusion. The saline solution “tastes” like they are putting a chemical in your body. It’s nasty. It doesn’t take long, but why go thro...

A port, short for portacath or subcutaneous (under the skin) port, is a small reservoir that is attached to a catheter, a thin, soft, flexible tube. It is implanted under the skin to allow easy access to veins. They don’t have to find a good vein, because they know the port feeds directly into one. The needle goes through the skin into the port, and the drug goes through the catheter into the vein. It makes it much easier to administer drugs or take blood samples.  When you have cancer they test your blood very frequently to make sure you are okay. Some need chemo infusions every week for twelve weeks, some, like me, get them every three weeks for eighteen weeks. For some of us the infusions don’t end after the chemo. I will be given Herceptin infusions for a total of one year. This will hopefully prevent the cancer from coming back.  Some choose not to have a port placed, but to get a new IV in the arm each time they get an infusion. Sometimes it is difficult to find a vein t...