Porter, My Frenemy and Faithful Defender

I sort of mentioned this in passing, when I was talking about my first chemo treatment. My port. Nicknamed Porter. Porter Rockwell.

He's a little scary.

Oh. Wait. That was the real Porter Rockwell. My bad.

My Porter Rockwell looks a little bit more like this:

He's also a little scary. Srsly. Look at those crazy eyes.

And once more, in close up:

And so is he, but for different reasons.

So, this is what the port looked like when it was first placed in my body. That's not what it looks like now. What it looks like now is more like this:

Don't you just love that wallpaper border in the BG?

You can see that it's quite the bulge I've got there (sorry... phrasing). Once that sucker gets removed, I'm going to have a weird flappy-flap flap of skin. Some strange bubble of flesh, just sitting there as a reminder of this, the best time I've ever had.

Wouldn't it?

Would you like the truth? The real truth?

My port scares me.

I feel like I've had some alien thing invade my body. It doesn't help that it sometimes looks and feels like it's trying to get out.

You knew it was coming.

Seriously, go back up and take a look at that last picture of the port. You can see how tightly the skin is pulled around it. Those three bumps you see on the sort of flat surface on top is to guide the nurses on where to access the device.

I've gotten used to having it there, and as a certifiable needle-phobe, I truly appreciate not having to get an IV put into my arm every two weeks. I'm now at the point where I don't cringe if my wife accidentally brushes up against it. It no longer makes me nauseated to look at it or think about it. At least not if I don't think too much.

Because when I think about it a lot, I remember that the port leads into one of the main veins that goes directly into my heart. I recognize that anything inserted into the port goes almost immediately into my heart, and from there to everywhere else in my body.

When the port is first accessed, the nurse usually flushes it out with a couple of syringes' worth of saline solution. The weird thing that happens then is that I taste something similar to ammonia in my mouth. Saline apparently tastes like cleaning solution when you inject it into a body.

I can feel the pressure going into or out of my port, depending on whether the nurse is pushing or pulling on the syringe. Oh, because that's another part of it. In order to make sure the port is working properly, they pull back on the syringe occasionally, to make sure they see blood. If they don't, it's possible the chemo is escaping into my chest somewhere, instead of going into my bloodstream.

That would be bad.

I've talked about the chemo drugs, right? That they're super toxic? So, yeah. Bad. Really bad.

This actually is a lot more fun than what I'm talking about.

I know I should be grateful. And I am, mostly.

But this isn't just about the good. There's a lot of bad that goes along with cancer treatment. It is possible to be simultaneously thankful for something and to fear what it represents.

What does it represent? I've thought about that question a lot. Why does it bother me so much? Do I just have a weak stomach? I know that can't be true. I'm the designated cleaner-outer of the nasty leftovers that get shoved to the back of the fridge. I never gag when I'm cleaning out that stuff.

My port is a symbol of my loss of control over my body and my life.

That control was always illusory. But that illusion is one that I've fought to maintain my entire existence on this planet. And to have it stripped away, summarily, is...

Well, it's upsetting.

What would life be without the occasional A Fish Called Wanda reference?

I'm being forcibly divested of some of my favorite lies. I could fight that process. Live in complete denial of what's happening.

Or I could embrace it.

The embrace is tentative, awkward. Probably pretty painful to watch.

Dished up with big ol' side helping of homophobia, perhaps?

I have no real idea what I'm doing.

But when push comes to shove, I'd rather accept a hard truth than live an easy lie.

So today, I'm searching hard to find gratitude for something that feels like a hostile takeover. I choose to call my cybernetic enhancements nicknames that make me chuckle. Or at least smile a bit.

The alternative feels so much bleaker.
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Upcoming episode--we explore the tenuous but exciting relationship between chemotherapy and bona fide superpowers.

I feel pretty. Oh so pretty...

Next post.