Six Letter Word [Kaylor]

April 2017 (Part 2)

                   

Accessing my port for the first time at home was an adventure. I took a shower to already have my skin as clean as possible for maximum infection prevention, while Karlie unpacked boxes and boxes of at-home medical supplies. So much packaging goes into it, it's crazy. We must have had ten or fifteen boxes to put out for recycling, plus all the assorted wrappers that kept each piece of equipment sterile. It seemed crazy how much was needed for a three-hour infusion, twice a week at home. But keeping everything sterile was crucial, especially given my history with infection, so all those little plastic packets were weirdly reassuring.

We'd considered our options for where in the house we wanted to do it. The bedroom seemed ideal since that was likely where I would want to be during the infusion. Comfy, close to the bathroom, easy closet access if I got cold or hot. But the bed wasn't a really great place to lay out a sterile field to put the supplies on, and it was a weird height for my enormously tall wife. In the end, we decided that it would be easiest if I could actually lay on the kitchen island, because the counter height was tailored to the fact that both of us are pretty tall, and there was lots of wide open flat space. So Karlie had also gone over the entire counter with disinfecting wipes, following the directions on the package to make sure they really killed all the germs they were supposed to. After all, the kitchen is home to tons of germs. It definitely felt weird to boost myself onto the counter and lay down. Not a thing I'd ever really considered as a likely activity. But the marble quickly adjusted to my body heat, and it really wasn't bad.

Karlie took her time laying everything out, dumping the contents of all those packages on the sterile square that existed just for that reason. Tubing and needles and gauze and gloves and dressing and sterile swabs and saline to flush the port with. Upstairs we had all the infusion bags set up: two of pre-meds, a bag of the chemo cocktail, a saline in case I seemed dehydrated, and also extra antihistamines and even an epi-pen in case I seemed to be having an allergic reaction. Not that my team expected us to need any of that. But they wanted us to have it just in case. Which I guess was smart. Karlie was prepared to watch for signs that something was different than normal when it came to side effects, and really, aside from not particularly wanting to a do the infusion at all because vomiting and exhaustion, I wasn't worried. Which was odd for me, but I chalked it up to how much I truly trust Karlie and my team. They wouldn't have set this up if they didn't think it was going to go perfectly.

The first tricky part was exposing the right amount of skin around my port. I'd chosen a low-cut tank top and an easily maneuverable bra to try to make it easy, but no matter how I pulled and tugged and tucked, the shirt would always shift back into the space Karlie needed to put the dressing, so I finally pulled my shirt off and lay on the counter in my bra. Without the shirt holding it out of the way, however, the strap was too close to the port as well. Add "lay completely topless on the kitchen counter" to the list of new experiences. At least it was with my wife, and there was no danger of us being surprised. It wasn't my best look. But it did give Karlie plenty of space to work in, and she finally felt satisfied enough to put on her gloves and start swabbing. I knew she had to be nervous, doing this without Andy to guide her, but I also knew she could handle it.

I was so worried I would do something wrong accessing Taylor's port. Or setting up the pump and meds after. I mean, they gave us so many fail-safes, intellectually I knew that wasn't possible, but there was always that little bit of worry nagging at the corner of my mind. I wanted this to work. She already had to go to the hospital for infusions once a week and radiation every day. I didn't want her trapped there for two more infusions a week as well. But that didn't make it less nerve-wracking. I knew that if something didn't go as well as hoped we still had plenty of backups, whether it be the equipment not working out, or if Taylor were to have a reaction to something, they'd given us tools to deal with that too. I'd seen her through all kinds of reactions when we were in the hospital. The regular chemo side effects like nausea and vomiting, but also the allergic reaction to the dressing on her port. I'd triple checked the home care company had sent us the right kind three times, just to be safe. And I knew that any reaction she might have wouldn't be my fault. But that didn't stop me reversing our roles and being the anxious one, just a bit.