April 5, 2011 - Port Installation Day

Up early AGAIN, man the 5:00 am wake ups are tough.  I want to go by every room on my floor of the hotel and scream and yell to remind all the nuts that were awake and making the same noise at 3:00 am that there are other people in the hotel beside the "final four" idjits.  Oh well.  The surgical floor at Mays clinic is on the eight floor and we head out to meet our 7:00 am deadline.

Before surgery, they send me downstairs to draw more blood.  By now I feel that my whole blood volume has been replaced in the last 2 weeks to meet all that MDA has sucked out of me.  ;-)  But they are awesome, gee, I don't even have bruising from the chemo yesterday.

The whole team of nurses is awesome and Dr. Brown is a riot.  He has done over 5000 port insertions, I am number 5030!  Erwin has more personality than any Dr. I have met so far.  He sings to me during and after my surgery, in fact that's the only part of the surgery I remember, the port is achy and stiff.  What is in the stuff that they inject into your IV before surgery?  I want to put in an order for all my shots to be like that one.  I don't even remember being pushed down the hall.  So, all in all, not a bad morning morning for me.

First item on my agenda after surgery is to eat.  What?  You were expecting something bigger?  Trust me, when you haven't eaten for almost 18 hours, nothing is more important than your growling belly.  Calls to Kelsey and Libby are made to make everyone warm and fuzzy.  I know that it's hard on Kelsey, not to be here, but she is on her last 2-3 weeks of growing the second most important person in my life, so she will just have to deal for now. Love you Kelsey, and Andy too!

Back to the room for a well deserved nap and then out to find somewhere to eat dinner.  The shuttle rides from the hotel are quite interesting.  Nita ends up having to hold on to me to keep me from bouncing all over the van and jerking back and forth with all the starts and stops.  Glad she is here, bossy control freak that she is.  Hey, it's a family trait...