Once, twice, three times a patient...

Woke up at the crack of dawn today to get ready for the port installation / implantation /placement. Wasn't allowed to eat after midnight, so no coffee to assist the process, which sucked. Woke Alix up early for school, and Albert & I grabbed a cab up to Mount Sinai, up on 100th and Madison. HUGE hospital, much bigger than NYU, more bureaucracy but with nice touches here and there, like instead of just waiting for someone to take your info, you get one of those mall beepers. Got there at 7 as requested, surgery started at around 9:30. They used a vein on the front of my wrist, very very very painful. Also, the twilight sleep-- not the pain meds, just the sleepy meds -- wore off about 20 minutes before the surgery ended, so I heard them talking about how hard it was to get the implant in. Shoulder feels like someone socked me 10 times, hard. Looks that way too. Then I needed a xray after but the first one wasn't usable, so they did another. Gave me some graham crackers and juice. Discharged me 10 minutes before round 2 - Chemotherapy - was supposed to start.

So, into another cab, head down the FDR to Ruth's for chemo. Beth takes one look at the dressing and sees how much I was bruised, takes blood, gets the line in, then cleans up the whole port area again & rebandages it. Tapes a glove full of ice on it afterwards for the swelling, which was nice but about which more later. I talked with Beth about the "cold" bone scan, and that my research showed that some mets will not show on a bone scan, she says it's not very common but it does happen and that's Ruth's working theory too. So, I was right not to get too giddy. After she checks, she tells me my wbc (granulyte count) is slipping, so she's going to order neupogen, which I will self inject, for Friday and Sunday, and probably thereafter. We're all done by 1:45, the exact time we're scheduled for round 3 - Brain, thoracic & cervical spine MRIs.
Wouldn't it have been nice to know I still had 2 metal leads for the monitors sticking to my back before the MRI instead of finding them today? Probably.... wonder if that will screw up results in any way. So, anyway, over to NYU MRI in the basement, take 2 ativan, that help except that once I do fall asleep I wake up with a start. Apparently not a problem for them. They use my hand for the IV after the arm was no good (told them so....).
Could not have done any of this without Albert. He was there waiting at every step, getting me where I needed to be, optimistic, encouraging. We finally got home by 4. Percocet by 4:05. Asleep by 4:15. Woke a little for dinner, but slept again til now. Will try a little more sleep soon before tomorrow's round 4 -- liver biopsy.