My lifeline

This is what my port looks like. My implanted lifeline. 2 months ago, I couldn't tell you anything about a port or chemotherapy. Before February 2013, cancer, especially pancreatic cancer, happens to other people. Never in a million years would I have thought this would be my journey. My family dies from Cardiovascular Disease & Alzheimer's, not cancer.

Oh, but here I am! I was diagnosed with what is called, "the most lethal" of all cancers. Try wrapping your brain around that! It's a tough one to understand and grasp. The statistics are nauseatingly dismal. This cancer gets little in research compared to prostate and breast cancer. Then there are the survival rates. For prostate cancer, the overall survival rate is 99.2% at 5 years, for breast cancer it is 89%, for pancreatic adenocarcinoma, it's a whopping 6%!!  WOO HOO!! I'm so lucky! Yesterday my Oncologist said it's about a 10-20% chance of me surviving the 5 year mark! I'm doing really well.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not dismissing ANY cancer patients personal journey. What I am ranting and rather pissed off about is that the NIH and others put so much research dollars into a cancer, specifically prostate cancer, that is well known to be the slowest growing cancer and very unlikely to kill most men. In the words of many Doctors I know, "Prostate cancer isn't going to kill you, but heart disease will." 3 times the money is spent on prostate cancer that has a very good EARLY detection rate and CURE rate. I just wish pancreatic cancer would get the same research dollars. I'm not asking for more, I just want equality. I'm not even asking for me, I'm asking for my son, Kyle. I've already been diagnosed with this lethal bad girl. I live with not a question of "if" it comes back, but a "when" it comes back. The research I beg for is for my son and the other kids who have Mom's like me battling Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma.

Now on to what my day of chemo is like:
I've learned a lot about chemo in a very short time. I've learned that what you wear is very important to access my port. I usually wear a tank top under a zippered hoody or baggy sweater. A) it's easy for the nurse to access the port and B) the hospital is COLD, to me!
I arrive early on Mondays because they are usually very busy. Get checked in with the usual co-pay business and am given a pager. I get paged to the lab and have learned to automatically identify myself by my full name and date of birth. I've also memorized my account number from Vanderbilt and tell them that, just to impress them...lol
Once in the lab, the nurse wipes down my chest area and sticks a needle attached to a tube into my port. It sort of locks onto the port. No, it doesn't hurt, but then again, I had a Whipple procedure, so it shouldn't hurt compared to that. Once the port is locked on, the nurse will flush it and pull out some blood. Then she will withdraw 2-3 tubes of blood, flush the port with Heparin and then send me onto the Dr,
At the Doctor's appointment, he will pull up the results on the computer for me to see and it will determine whether I am ok to receive my chemo for the day. If it's a go, he prescribes my chemotherapy and I  head up to the second floor to the infusion center.

The infusion center is nice at VICC,. It has a family room for reheating food, a refrigerator, games and books.

Each patient gets their own room in the infusion center. Sometimes you get a bed (YAY!) and sometimes you get a big recliner. Once again your vitals are taken and you're prepped for chemo. A bag of saline is started and once the pharmacy has your chemo ready, 2 nurses come to verify that you are who you are and this is the drug you are to receive and then they add the chemo to your saline line.

My chemo time is only about an hour and a half, total. Which is a LOT better than some people I know. Some of my PC friends have to have chemo for a 12 hour stretch. That may be me someday.

Now it's Tuesday and I'm beginning to feel the effects of the chemo.

Time for my Oxygen mask, phenergan and sleep...my little post-chemo fever friend is back.