Be prepared for good days and bad days

That's what I was told by countless people in "the club" (cancer club to those of you not in the know). Thankfully, I have had way more good days than bad. But every now and then, when you least expect it, it sneaks up on you. You almost forget you have cancer for a few days, but something small hits you and sha-zam! Cancer! Things have been humming along smoothly the last few days. I've been pumping myself full of hormones, doing the baby thing, getting ready to schedule my chemo, yada yada- same old same old.

However, and I would like to blame the extremely high amounts of estrogen, I have been a bit more moody the last few days. I've felt fat, grumpy and a bit sad. I'm not allowed to have blood taken out of my lymph node arm so all my blood draws for the baby harvest are in my right- which now looks a bit like someone beat me up. The Puerto Rican Queen who takes my blood during the week blames the weekend staff. I'm sick of needles. It's starting to hurt. And it all hit me like a catheter yesterday when I got my port in.

I went into the hospital for a "simple outpatient procedure" to get my chemo port put into my chest. I'm told I will love my port. It's like a little quarter sized thing that's attached to a major vein under my skin. When I do chemo or they take blood, they just have to find the port and do it there. No more scary veins. This is "a good thing" as Martha would say. I arrived at the hospital at 7am to quickly get the egg shenanigans out of the way before my port stuff. The blood draw hurt. Par for the course.

I was set up at "interventional radiology"- who knows what that really means, and some nurse put in my IV line into my right hand. It really hurt. I've had them before and it was mildly uncomfortable, but not painful. Not this time. That is where the early hour, the hormones, the pain, the hospital all caught up with me. I burst into tears. This was real. This is my life. My life is hospitals and doctors and needles and procedures. My life is painful sometimes. It's hard. It sucks. It's totally not what I had planned. I have cancer. I have cancer. Oh, shit, I really do have cancer- the words kept echoing in my head.

It's funny, I had a part of my breast cut out and it didn't hit me nearly as much as the little needle in my vein. Funny how life works. Maybe it's because I saw the lumpectomy as a positive thing- I was getting Maria out of Dodge. The rest- it just blows.

Anyway, I had my procedure- another tiny little table. I was awake enough this time to ask them what they do with chubby people- the tech responded, "We balance them very carefully". I was given twilight sleep, which I gotta say, was bloody awesome. Normally I've just been knocked out. This was an amazing feeling of having like 8 cosmos but not having the room spin.

My shitty little nervous breakdown aside, I'm doing fine now. I'm pretty sore where the port is, and I have another awesome set of stitches and scars, but I'm okay. However, I gotta say, the next time I have a "procedure" where they tell me that Tylenol is all I'll need when I go home, I'm going to tell them to fuck off. Why don't we cut you up and glue you back together? It's not a damn headache. I'm not too proud for narcotics. In fact, isn't that one of the perks?

Port in - check
Egg Harvest- tomorrow