First shower of the year!!

Actually, it's my first shower in over 5 months!! Since November 26th, I've had a port in my neck for the nurses to get quick and painless blood draws. With the appointments slowing down to once every 2 to 3 weeks, I wasn't sure it made sense to keep it in. For those of you I haven't spoken to about this directly, it was essentially an IV line that accesses my jugular vein. It was clamped down on my collarbone and sealed with a clear plastic "dressing." It was one tube coming out of me, but then it splits into three tubes to allow for multiple medications or IV bags to be attached to me while I was under treatment or in the hospital.

In any case, after talking with Lister about it on Monday, we decided that we could probably safely take it out now. So, he says, "We'll do it right now if you want. Hold on..." and he exited the exam room. I'm thinking, "HUH? Uh....don't I need to go the surgery area or something?" He came back in with the last nurse there in the office that evening. She says to me, "Don't worry, it won't hurt. Now, turn your head away and exhale." If someone had told me that you could have 6-7 inches of tubing pulled from your jugular and barely feel it, I would NOT have believed them. However...really, I barely felt it. Just a sliiiiight pinch and then the pressure of her hand on my neck to make sure that there wouldn't be any bleeding. And there wasn't any! No blood on the tube, no blood on the gauze. Bizarre!

Needless to say, the pleasures of not having my tubes to worry about are great. I couldn't shower before because the dressing couldn't get wet, which meant months and months of baths. Also being careful not to roll over on them in the middle of the night and accidently pull them out (which the doctors fill you with stories of folks who have done just that). Not to mention that anytime I looked in the mirror or got together with a friend, there was this glaring reminder [of the obvious], and it's really getting too warm out to wear turtlenecks all the time.

Interestingly enough, I put on a tank top today and barely noticed my the scars on my chest. I'm just so happy to not have the port sticking out anymore that all other marks on my chest seem minimal. To celebrate, tonight, I'm baring CLEAVAGE.