The time I tried to get a new port....

When it comes to our healthcare it's never a bad a idea to be pro-active and take care of things before something goes bad. That's what my doctor and I were trying to do when we decided to pull my 8 year old port and replace it with a fancy new dual lumen one. Nothing is wrong with the port itself but the skin over it has become very thin and bruised from constant access and also has some scar tissue built up behind it. Over the past year or so I have mentioned it to my surgeon and we decided on putting in a dual lumen one. A dual lumen means there is 2 access spots for the needle to be inserted. The idea being I could alternate sides so skin could heal up between uses and avoid the thin bruised skin I know have. My plan was to have it done before summer started so the incisions would be healed up before the hot weather hit.

Well you know what happens about the best laid plans right? They go awry....which is exactly what happened, sort of. In early May, Mike and I went to the outpatient surgical center to have the ports switched out. All went well until I woke up and found out that instead of 1 port I know had 2! My trusty 8 year old one refused to come out! Although I knew I was getting a dual lumen port, I never really thought about how much bigger it would actually be. My old one is about 3/4" round and my new one is about 1.5 times that and rectangular. I can really feel it when I am laying on my right side. My surgeon places ports but his specialty is Colo-Rectal surgery not Cardio-Thoracic and he didn't feel comfortable yanking very hard to remove the hold port so he left it in and referred me to a Cardio-Thoracic surgeon to see what her recommendations are. I had a rough next several days because both side of my chest were sore, bruised and swollen from having work on them. Luckily both ports work so I could continue to use the old one while the new site healed as it was more bruised and swollen. We waited about 10 days to access the new port, it felt like Mike got the right spot and got blood return which is usually a good sign. I did feel some burning while flushing with saline but decided to hook up anyway, I thought the burning was from still being bruised and sore. After about 45 minutes I noticed that my shoulder was getting stiff and swollen so I stopped my pump and decided to stop flush and cap the line. I did call my nurse, texted my doctor and called my Nurse Practitioner brother-in-law who deals with ports to discuss my concerns. I already had an appointment with the specialist set up for 10 days later so we decided to wait until after then to access the port. 

We saw the new surgeon last week and she showed us exactly what the new port looked like and where the access spots are. She will try to remove the old port when we are more comfortable accessing the new one and we are ready to have the old one removed.  After several nights of trying and using different needle lengths, I was finally able to access the new port and use it successfully. I think for now I am going to access it myself since I feel more comfortable "feeling" around under the skin for the right spot to hit and give my faithful nurse/husband a break. I've added some pictures below of what the sites looked like the day after the surgery and the bruising several days later.

In time, I know that my new port will work and feel just fine once we get over the learning  curve of accessing it. In my mind, I thought every thing would be very easy and we wouldn't have problems getting old one out or accessing the new ones so I wasn't ready for both things to happen. I know I am very lucky to have had my old trusty line for 8 years because there are many that struggle with line infections and have them for really short periods of time. As long as they work with no infection, I can keep Living, Loving and Laughing while I am hydrating! 

Love to all,

Michelle