never miss a thing: I have 2 ports?

Friday, February 22, 2008

I have 2 ports?

Who knew? Interesting fact I learned at the plastic surgeon's yesterday. So, there is a port in the expander that has a magnet on it so that they can find it each time i need an injection. Weird, right? The nurse was running this magnet thing over the expander and marking dots on my skin where she picked up the magnet so that they would know where the port is. little known tidbit.

so here are my side effects thus far:
* Loss of appetite.
* Mouth sores. (yup- i didn't realize that this was because the chemo kills all fast growing cells- even the healthy ones - and your mouth/tongue is made up of fast growing cells- biology lesson #2)
* Higher risk of infection (due to decreased white blood cells makes you able to get sick easier).
* Bruising or bleeding.
* Fatigue.

good times.

it is snowing here in the 5 boroughs (you can't see the snowing falling upwards in the picture - but it is)

1 comment:

donna said...: Nic, thanks for the updates. I have been thinking and praying for ya! Love, Don Don; February 24, 2008 at 2:59 AM

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YES! It's here! If you want to buy a shirt to help me out with the medical bills as they are starting to pile up, I would greatly appreciate it. If you would rather not, please pass it on to your nosy neighbor to see if they will instead.
There are two styles: "circles" or "tank"(see feb.18th post for a picture of each) If you would like tank, please specify in the "Is there any else you want to tell me" field. If you don't specify, I am just going to assume circles. And I am also going to assume that you have nothing else to say.
Thanks so much for helping out! And pass it on to other generous people. (not selfish people, they are no fun.) -nicole

If you feel funny about sending money over the "interweb", email me at n2creative@gmail.com and we'll work something out.

the back story:

So, a couple of months ago my mother told me that one of my good friends growing up was diagnosed with breast cancer and was currently going through chemo treatment to shrink the tumor before operating.(side note about friend: we were best friends from age 5 when they moved in behind us in the neighborhood until middle school when we moved away- we spent countless hours together and our mothers are still good friends)
so when i found out about her it got me thinking that i had not done a self exam in ages - so a few days later in the shower i found it. i read some about tumors and felt sure that it was benign but went ahead and made an appointment to get it looked at.
a few weeks later i was in the dr.s office and he shuttled me down to radiology to get it looked at. he was more alarmed at the size of the mass than the odds that it was cancerous - so he felt it was better to be safe than sorry and had me to get a sonogram and mammogram that next week. he as well as the radiologist assured that the odds were good that it was a fibroatanoma (benign fibrous tumor) but again better to play it safe and have it biopsied just to be sure.
i hadn't heard back from the doctor so i assumed no news was good news. but i will never forget him calling me back - i was in the nashville airport coming back from our girls weekend and he asked when i was back because he wanted me to come in to the office. i told him preferred to know what was going on now since obviously it was bad news. he said that normally he would rather speak to a patient about this in person but under the circumstances he understood. he then gave me the diagnoses and some numbers to call the next morning to set up appointments with surgeon and fertility specialist.
whirlwind flight back that was canceled and resulted in me having a breakdown with the gate agent (poor guy) and i was forced to spend the night in DC wondering what in the world was happening.
i have since met up with my friend from childhood and she has been invaluable to me going through all of this and i hope that we can both support each other throughout the next months... it is just too odd that we are both within a week in age, have similar upbringings and have this diagnoses so close together. all we can think of is that we both licked the paint off the barbie dream house at some point (we were both huge barbie fans and that was the majority of our play time) or there was something funky in the creek behind our neighborhood. i do plan on doing more research on this because the similarities are just too much but for now i am blaming it on the barbie dream house

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Friday, February 22, 2008

I have 2 ports?

1 comment:

never miss a thing

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the back story:

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