I'll be brief today.  I made the mistake of taking Lortab on an empty stomach this afternoon and am feeling quite nauseated and awful.  DUH!!!

I went in this morning to get my port installed.  It is a little triangle-shaped chamber, about the size of a quarter, where the chemo will be infused, and any other needed IV's or blood draws (which will be many) can come from there too.  It sits right under my skin under my collar bone and has three raised dots on the top.  It pokes up some, so it's obvious something is in there.  The nurses can just feel for the dots and then center the needles right in between them.  It has a skinny "straw" that was fed up into one of the main arteries in my neck that leads to my heart. Exciting, huh?  I decided it was a better option than countless needle pricks over the coming months. 

The procedure itself freaked me out.  I knew that I would be awake, but it turned out the drugs were fabulous.  I could hear everything they were saying and could feel that they were doing something, but it was no problem at all.  They had moniters all over me checking my vitals, a blood pressure cuff on my leg and they adjusted the drug levels based on what my body was telling them.  Thanks to Mary who came as my driver, but she also held my hand as the nurse was doing the IV (sometimes the IV stresses me out more than the procedure--I've had too many nurses digging for veins too many times in my bad arm!), and talked and talked and kept me distracted.  : )

Follow-up on my dad, for those of you that know him.  He slept the entire day today.  He had many visitors and lots of noise, but was unaware of most of it.  They still have him on oxygen, his lungs still have fluid in them (pneumonia), but he's not gurgling audibly.  He also has sepsis, probably from chronic bladder infections and UTI's.  My mom arranged yesterday for hospice to come in and help him and us through this process.  They say his organs are shutting down and it shouldn't be too much longer before he passes.  In a lot of ways, that will be a blessing for him.  He became paraplegic 20 years ago (we just passed the "anniversary") and has suffered A LOT since then.