port a cath

Hello Bellas gma,
Very nice to meet you. Im very sorry its under these circumstances. My name is Lori. I am 50 yrs old but was diagnosed at 48. No one in my family was ever diagnosed with breast cancer so i guess im the carrier and i have five daughters. I was diagnosed with infiltrating ductal carcinoma and ductal carcinoma in situ oct 20,2009. I was stage 3b grade 3 and also her2 positive and a score of 3+. I got my port a cath put in pretty quick. Its much easier for you and them. My cocktail was Taxotere,Carboplatin and Herceptin. But the chemo itself...well i just took my anti nausea pills every four to six hours and it worked. I stayed ontop of it before it got me. I didnt lose one lb. Instead i gained weighed. I was always hungry..
I was suppose to do chemo six rounds once every three weeks and the herceptin they wanted me to do for a year. But i already had a weak heart caused from my rheumatoid arthritis attacking it two years prior. The herceptin dropped my heart funtion down to 30% so i had to quit it. Then i had 28 days of radiation after the chemo. Well i could only finish 27 because i got burned so bad that it gave me 2nd degree burns. I know they dont call it that but i forgot what they call it. I had to see the burn specialists team and they told me it was 2nd degree burns on my skin. It also fried my lungs and damaged left side of my already damaged heart and now i have a pretty bad case of copd. Ive been hospitalized three times because of it. I know alot of woman that have went through the same as me and ive never heard of any of them having the rads do this to them. So please dont let me scare you. Im just telling my story. So i will pray for you to get through this without any complications. Any questions..im here...many hugs and prayers sent your way.
Lori

Hi Bellas gma,

Yes i had to do my radiation after chemo also. I had a double masectomy. I felt that if my cancer was that bad and grew that fast...I wasnt going to take the risk of having to go through it all over again. But for the port a cath, they put me under very briefly to put it in so i didnt feel anything. But it did stick out quite a bit. One time i turned the corner in the kitchen and hit the port a cath right on the corner of the wall....Now that hurt. But other than that I had no problems at all with it. And when you go to get your chemo. They just stick the i.v. right in there and it really doesnt hurt too much. The worst part is the tape they put on there to hold the i.v in...It felt like they were ripping all my skin off when they would peel it off.. After chemo and before i started radiation i asked my sergion if he would please take it out because i felt like my body was rejecting it. So he did a local...I felt everything..ugh! OUCH! And I knew something wasnt right with it...my doc says...oh...hmmmn then he was snipping tissue off the cath. So im thinking that the tissue was growing over it or something. I was just glad to get it out. But yes everyone reacts different to everything. So like I said the other day what happened to me is rare. I know alot of women who had radiation and they had nothing like that happen to any of them...Just me...lol!

I lost all of my hair. I had all my kids and gkids come up and shave my head before i lost it. My main concern was my eyebrows. I didnt want to lose them. Losing my hair was no biggy because you can cover it in so many ways...but not the eyebrows. Well my sister found me a bunch of fake tattoo eyebrows. And here I never lost them after all....go figure! Dont be worried about the cath getting put in. Youre going to be just fine. Please feel free to ask me anything you want. I am very open and not a shy person at all especially if i can help you in anyway to get through this. May God Bless you and i will continue to pray for you.many hugs and tons of love!

Lori

Hello'

  Just wanted to give you and update on how things are going for me so far.  I had the port a cath put in this Tuesday.  It wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be but I was really sore and hurting. Wednesday it hurt worse!  Thursday I was scheduled to start Chemo but couldn't due to the swelling in my chest. I'm bruised really bad and still in pain. My Doctor took one look at it and decided to shoot for Monday to try for chemo again. He was upset because he couldn't find port a cath due to swelling.  I thought I was suppose to have something sticking out so they could just hook me up for chemo. 

  My daughter and I went yesterday and picked out a Wig.  Last night I let my daughter and my son buzz my hair off.   Now I'm just resting and drinking lots of water to try and get this swelling to go down.

Hi! In Sweden we get a free course in makeup(and makeupthings in present)and also how to make a nice turban when you loose your hair. It was very helpfull and since I already had lost my hair I could give advice to the others where to find nice turbans and how to make it look really like your in the latest fashion. If you put on eyeliner and paint eyebrows softly and a little eyeshadow people have to come really close tio see that you lost it all and it's fake. I had so many complements of my turbans and that I looked so nice that I never ever put on the wig that I had tried out. After the chemo and the raditation all came back very quickly. First the eyebrows and the eyelashes and slowly the hair. In two month the hair was back and stronger the ever. I found out that short hair suites me better then long. Since then I have short haircuts. Keep struggling it is not as bad when you see everything in the backmirror. Good luck!