Tuesday March 20, 2007: Port Number 2

Today Kristi gets her intra-peritoneal port (I/P port). We’re hopeful the doctors don’t find any tumors larger than 1cm. The I/P port chemo treatments don’t work on tumors larger than 1cm. They will also do exploratory surgery today to see if the cancer has spread. So a very anxious day for us. We had to be at Blodgett Hospital at 7:55AM! We checked in and everything went per schedule. We met with Dr. Downy before surgery and he reviewed what he was going to do. At about 8:30 the anesthesiologist gave Kristi her “happy medicine” and off she went. Denny waited with me in the waiting room the entire time. After about 2 hours I became very fidgity. Finally, after nearly 3 hours Dr. Downy came out after surgery and met with me and Denny. To say I was a wreck was an understatement. I was shaking and felt like I was going to throw up. Dr. Downy looked at me and asked “are you OK?” Dr. Downy’s demeanor was very downcast. I thought he was going to drop another bomb on me. Just the way he walked up and started talking I was waiting for the bomb to drop. The conversation was very unusual. He seemed very annoyed. Apparently there was a lot of scar tissue that may hamper the effectiveness of the I/P port. Was I supposed to be sorry for this?! The port went in, but we won’t know if it will work until they do a distribution test in 2 weeks. According to Dr. Downy, there was an “excessive” amount of scar tissue. It was so excessive it fused together some of her intestines. What may happen is that the chemo might “pool” up in some of these pockets. This stuff is so toxic that that would be a bad thing. So, they have to do this distribution test for a “trial run”. Dr. Downey also removed the nodule that formed in the spot of her laproscopic surgery port.

Kristi came out of the recovery room at about 1:00PM. Denny stuck around long enough to say ‘hi’ to Kristi, then he took off. It looked like we were going to spend the night. Because of the amount of scar tissue, Dr. Downy said Kristi would be quite sore and probably require and overnight stay. Unfortunately, they stuck us in a semi-private room. Yes, we had a roommate…and a very chatty one at that!! Kristi rested most of the afternoon, but by 5:00 she wanted to get up and walk around. Dr. Downy came in about 5:30 and met with us again. This time he was much more cordial. He didn’t really have any more news for us. He just elaborated again on how much scar tissue she had. Overall, he seemed happy with how the surgery went. He said if Kristi was up to it we could go home. Kristi didn’t even hesitate…”let’s go!” Here's a picture of Kristi waiting to get discharged...