After my initial consultation at UofM I was set up with appointments for a bone marrow biopsy and to evaluate and fix/replace the port in my chest.
I went on Monday morning to my primary care office to have blood drawn to check and see if my levels were high enough for the biopsy that was going to be scheduled on wednesday. Since my counts were starting to rebound we went ahead with the appointment as planned.
Bone Marrow Biopsy 3.0
When I arrived on the 16th the first step was to go to the blood work lab to get my labs re-drawn as well as to get a bunch of markers drawn that would be used in evaluating my transplant eligibility. It is well known that my veins are not easy to work with, and with my port still out of commission I was dreading this. Then the technician printed up all of the labels for the tubes, there were at least 16 of them and I started to panic. However, the lady doing the blood draw was amazing. She got a vein right away on the first try and all of the tubes filled quickly.
Next we went back up to the leukemia clinic to wait for my appointment with Heather the PA. First a nurse or medical assistant (not sure which she was) took my vitals and let us know that she would be part of the procedure, playing music and massaging my back during the procedure. We laughed because we thought it was a joke, but it wasn't. During this biopsy I lay flat on my stomach with Ed Sheeran playing in the background getting a massage. The biopsy was still painful, but the pressure was much less with being flat on my stomach instead of on my side.
After the procedure I had to lie flat on my back for 15 minutes (to stop any bleeding) and then we were free to go. Overall a pretty uneventful appointment.
Port Replacement
On the 22nd I had my appointment with interventional radiology. I was dreading this because of the prospect of having to have my chest cut open and getting anesthesia. For some reason I have this intense fear of not waking up from anesthesia.
The morning starts off badly because we are running late and we have only ever parked in structure P4, not P2 and we couldn't locate P2. We decided to just park in our normal spot and navigate the hospital hallways, which was no small feat because the interventional radiology was in the University Hospital and we are normally in the Children's hospital. So we finally get to IR and get called back. It's one of those areas where they have lots of people in different stalls separated by curtains. While we are waiting they come and hook up an IV, which the nurse also did expertly and surprisingly easy (another part I had been dreading).
The radiologist came by to talk to us about what was going to happen. He asked questions about my existing port and explained what he thought we should do. Basically the plan was to prep me as if I was going to have the procedure, but that he would take images to confirm the other port was un-fixable before doing anything.
Once in the room I was again invited to pick a pandora station to listen to during my procedure (I went with Ed Sheeran again) and they began prepping the sterile environment. They have a big xray machine that does live imaging and they took some pictures of my existing port to get an idea of what was going on. I could again see on the screen where the catheter was flipped over on the inside, and the radiologist said that he wasn't going to be able to flip it back. The anesthesia for this procedure is just twilight, so I actually stayed awake through it all which was kind of interesting.
Before going back we had also agreed that the new port would be on the right side instead of the left where the current one was. He walked us through the process and the reasons why the right side was a better, more direct approach. In order to install the new port he first had to make an incision in my chest and create a "pocket" for the port to sit in. The port kind of looks like a little metal pot that has a rubber bubble over top of it. The rubber bubble is the part that sits against my skin where the nurse pokes the needle in when the port is accessed. Next he would make a small puncture on my neck and insert the catheter into the vein. I'm not really sure how they get the catheter in the vein to hook up with the port in the chest (based on the location of the two cuts) but I guess it all works out and connects somehow.
After the new port was in and the incision stitched up he moved onto the left side for the removal. The removal was a little more difficult than expected because tissue in my chest had grown around the port after it being there for 2 years. They had to cut the tissue away and then remove the old port and catheter. He had to cut slightly below the old incision to do this, so now I will have a double scar on that side.
Other Updates
So due to the bad rash that I had gotten after the piic line and mid line at Karmanos, we made sure they knew that I was sensitive to adhesives and they used something called tegaderm to cover the incisions. This is the same thing that is used on a normal day when my port is accessed.
The procedure was on Tuesday and by Wednesday night I noticed I was starting to get itchy on my chest and back of my neck. I could feel little bumps too. I thought it was weird that they were on the back of my neck, but then I remembered the nurse wiping down the back my neck after the procedure saying that the sterile cleanser had dripped around there. I immediately called the after hours clinic number to ask if it was OK to remove the bandages (12 hours early). I had Alan help me remove them and thoroughly clean all of the betadine off of my skin from under the bandages. Luckily because we recognized this early and cleaned it off quickly the reaction didn't seem to get as bad as the ones on my arm did.
During the time my counts were up I was able to get out to see some of Alan's family at a get together and go to dinner with my family. We also took advantage of our Movie Pass, going to early day time showings where there weren't a lot of people and I could use my lysol wipes on the seats before sitting. It wasn't much, but it was better than being quarantined to the house or hospital.
That's all for now :)
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