We had freezing rain here! My partner lives near the hospital where I get my treatments, so I stayed overnight so my drive would be easier for radiation this morning. My car was COVERED in ice but I only had to go a few blocks. Radiation is going well. On Mondays, I have a short meeting with my radiation oncologist. She's great.
In the afternoon, I saw my surgeon and got my port removed! Since I'm done with chemo, and I don't have a regular schedule of infusions, it made sense to get it taken out. It took about half an hour, and it was a little more difficult to remove than they expected. I hadn't had it in for that long, in the grand scheme of things, but my body had tried very hard to incorporate it so there was a lot of tissue connected to it. This is called "scarring down." It sounds worse than it is. They cleaned and sterilized the area, cut through the scar from the port insertion (so no additional scarring!), cut through the tissue that was trying to hold on to the port, removed the catheter, and popped it out. I did not watch! I do not need to know what any of that looks like! But it was fairly painless and over quickly. I'm so happy with the job that my surgeon did, and I told him so. He said that they work very hard to make things look nice with a flat closure, and that people didn't always realize that they really did try to do an aesthetic job. I also saw the ultrasound technician who had done the ultrasound when I was first diagnosed in the hallway while I was leaving, and I was able to thank her in person for how kind she had been to me in those appointments. (She's also REALLY good at her job.)
I have talked to a number of people and doctors in my orbit about whether to get my uterus taken out when I get my ovaries out, and at this point I think I'm hoping to get it all taken out since I'm having a procedure done anyway. The downside is mostly "harder recovery," and the upside is "no more pap smears, no risk of uterine cancer."
Unrelated to all of these events, last weekend, one of the outside cats that I watch out for (I put out water for them, build little shelters for them for the winter, stuff like that) showed up on my doorstep starving and freezing. She yelled until I brought her inside. She's a very friendly cat, and I've been wanting to bring her in for a long time. She's been around since she was a kitten, for about 8 years. I got her in to see the vet a couple of days later, did bloodwork, and due to (we think) the extreme stress of having a bad tooth and not being able to eat, as well as having to navigate sub-zero temperatures for a week, she was very weak with a super low red blood cell count. She's on antibiotics and steroids (the antibiotics are just a precaution since she's been outside her whole life). In the course of pilling her on Sunday morning, she ended up breaking the skin on my pointer finger on my right hand. In my old, pre-cancer life, I would have cleaned it out, put antibiotic ointment on it, and then just kept an eye on it. But now, I can't afford to take things lightly. I went to a convenient care (like a non-urgent Urgent Care, basically) near my house (I am very lucky to live where I live), and the NP gave me some prescription-strength ointment to use, and felt that I had started treating it early enough to not worry. You may recall that on Mondays, I see my radiation oncologist! I made a point of telling her about the cat bite, and we agreed that, out of an abundance of caution, a course of oral antibiotics would be a good idea. I'm very fortunate to have this kind of access to doctors and medication. We're going to keep an eye on it, but I'm so much less worried now that I know I'm doing everything I can do keep myself healthy. Cat bites can get badly infected very quickly. Since the incident, I have been more careful about pilling the little cat, and we have done very well.
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