Ports are a surgical device placed in your chest by a surgeon that allows chemo to be delivered direct to a vein. This allows consistent access to your vein that is safe and can expedite treatment if you are receiving chemotherapy (or sometimes immunotherapy). For a great oversight about ports you can visit: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/24663-chemo-port
The short version is that a port is placed under your skin, which keeps it clean and protected, and allows your medical provider to poke through the skin, into the port which leads to your vein. If your port is placed immediately before your first treatment then it is likely that the first access will be painful as there will be bruising at the installation site. The pain decreases with time.
In addition you can request a lidocaine cream from. your medical provider. When applied 30-45 minutes before access this cream deadens the skin and so you feel the "poke" less. With time, most of us find that the pain abates to a small inconvenience.
It is worth saying that some of us have a problem with adhesives and so we find the most troublesome part of dealing with a port is when it is "deaccessed" (basically when they take the needle out) and the bandage that covers the port while it is accessed has to be removed. If you find that you are experiencing a pain when the bandage is removed, know that most medical facilities have an alternate bandage for sensitive skin that you can request.
Many ports will also allow contrast liquid (used in imaging like CTs or PET scans) to enter your blood stream. Meaning that, as long as your imaging facility has the appropriate personnel (most medical facilities require a nurse to be present for accessing the port) you can use your port for your imaging. This is important to know, and when your medical staff orders an image for you, you may want to confirm with them that the imaging facility can use your port to deliver any needed contrast. Otherwise you will have to deal with having an IV put in. And, while many people have no problem with IV installation some of us are "hard to stick."
One personal story...I did have to go to an imaging facility that did not have a nurse on staff and so I had to get an IV in my arm. Although I think the IV was put in appropriately initially, after it was placed the technician adjusted it to optimize the flow of the contrast. At that point, apparently, the IV slipped out of my vein. As a result the contrast, which is designed to go into your vein, ended up going into my tissue. It was one of the more painful things I have experienced and caused severe swelling in my arm. (Do not recommend.). For that reason I am pretty insistent that my port be used for imaging contrast.
I can't imagine this information would be of interest to folks not traveling through cancerworld.
according to the national health service of the UK. That means that if we don’t travel through cancer world as a patient, we are very likely to walk alongside someone we care about deeply. I personally find these posts fascinating and I hope that I will be able to be of help to someone (perhaps even myself) With information like this at some point. I sure do love you, Tina, Carter!