Chemo Port Removal Description

I originally posted this in the Member’s Café. Marion asked that I repost it here. I’m going to post the entire description of how we arranged for labs and an IV access in addition to the actual port removal procedure. I may add a few things to the original description.

PORT IS OUT!!! Whoohoo!

For all of our planning….things didn’t go as expected or we were told.

We had arranged to go to the cancer center to do labs and then if they were okay to have an IV inserted, because my experience at the hospitals here has been awful in regard to IV insertions.

The cancer center put in the IV with no trouble….almost not even a prick discomfort. Then, we went to the Cardiac Lab for the port removal, where they immediately had someone there to do labs and put in an IV . It took them a while to understand that both had already been done….and that was even with the chemo nurse calling them twice….to check on the exact IV needle size they wanted and the maximum INR range they wanted. Apparently people in the cardio lab don’t talk to each other. Geesch!!!

Then, once the interventional radiologist knew I was there and had the labs and IV done, he was ready to go ahead early. l was good with that for sure. THEN……I find out that he would not have had me have an IV at all….and he used no sedation….only local numbing shots to deaden the area. GAH!!!! They never did access the IV……..or even unwrap the gauze and wrap on it until I was back in a prep room…when they took it out. Oh well. The port is gone….good riddance to bad rubbish.

For anyone who might be interested in the future as to what happens during a port removal, I can say that there really wasn’t that much to it. They didn’t even put me on the operating table as they had when I had it implanted over four months ago.

First, he numbed the area, which felt like a short bee sting….after which he opened the skin along the old incision site and within about a minute or two, he had removed the tubing and port. There were several times during the stitching (with dissolvable stitches) that I had a bit of a stinging sensation….when he was working on the outer edges of the numbed area. The stitching took much longer to do than the actual port removal. He applied surgical glue on top of the stitches and wound area. After stitching was done, then he put a very thick , folded gauze over the wound site and applied pressure for about 5 minutes to try to avoid accumulation of fluid that might lead to an infection. There’s no guarantee that it still won’t happen….the accumulation of fluid. I had this happen to two of my laprascopic incisions from my original liver surgery. Once the port has come out, there is then an empty hole area that can allow the formation of fluid. After that…..I was wheeled back to the prep room, the IV removed, got dressed and went home. Since I did not have sedation after all, I was allowed to go home immediately and not have to stay under observation for a couple hours. I had quite a bit of pretty nasty stinging sensation in the wound area, which they told me was from the surgical glue and that it would stop “soon”. Soon was something more like an hour and a half, but it has now pretty much gone away. That’s it.

Well, that wasn’t quite ALL of it. The rest of this is something that only people with adhesive sensitivities need worry about, but I didn’t know I even had adhesive sensitivities until after my original surgery this year. So, it took a while to figure out what was wrong last spring….and even now, I hadn’t thought about the adhesive used in the surgical field covering. After the stinging sensation quit in the actual wound area, …maybe several hours later, I had a new stinging sensation….and tonight, I realized that I was having another adhesive reaction. I thought it was to the special tape that he used to hold gauze in place…a tape we had discovered I tolerated fairly well, with limited skin reaction. Well, everywhere there was a wrinkle in the tape, the skin was swelling in ridges…and they burned…but that still wasn’t the main problem. It seems that the “sterile covering” they use in the OR to create a sterile field for the surgery has adhesive to which I’m very allergic. I had to finally peel away the tape and gauze and there it was….a blistered ridge, red and itchy/burning in a rectangular line following the shape of the taped opening in the surgical field covering they use. I am going to take the gauze and tape off….and “carefully wash the affected area with a mild soap and water to try to remove any residual adhesive. Once that is dry, I’ll put on a new gauze pad and some of the tape for super sensitive skin and make sure it doesn’t have any wrinkles in it. I was supposed to try to leave on the bandage the surgeon put on for a couple days if I could tolerate it…but I absolutely can’t deal with the burning. One more bump in the road.

Julie t.