A small step forward

Met with the surgeon this morning - a really nice young bloke. He explained the portocath to me.

Imagine three hollow ten cent pieces stacked one atop the other, with a rounded top surface with a hard gel-like filling. That's what's going onto the chest wall on Wednesday round lunch time. It has a long mouse tail (40cm?) of thin very soft plastic which will be threaded through into a vein in my chest cavity. This tube will sit in the vein, ending very close to the heart.

Chemo will be pumped into the portocath through a hole punctured in the top with a special needle. Presumably, there will be some sort of plumbing on the outside of my chest put there by the Oncologist - sort of like a well-head. Then we sit and wait for five months, or until it becomes clear that something - or nothing - is happening.

As an aside, Gaye and I had a great couple of days in Sydney. Saw Priscilla at the Lyric Theatre. It is phenomenal! And to think that Tony Sheldon (Bernice) and I were once considered equally talented. Admittedly, we were 13 or 14 at the time!

Also, decided to keep the bike. It's symbolic as much as anything. Selling it sort of means I don't expect to ride it again (the case when it looked as if I was having the Whipples), but now I intend it to be the first of many large capacity BMWs to grace the D'Arcy garage!!

More on Thursday.