Chemotherapy Port

What is a Chemotherapy Port?

When your life is turned upside down at the news that you have cancer, the most important thing that goes through your mind is, “Can I live through this?” Today, many people are faced with the diagnosis and then the testing begins. Blood testing, PET Scans, MRIs and biopsies start taking over your life. It is one hospital and doctor visit after another. Once the testing and images are all completed and sent to your doctor, he or she decides what should happen next depending on the type of cancer you have.

If you are a candidate for chemotherapy, then the doctor will most likely schedule a surgery to implant a chemotherapy port into your body near your collarbone.  A port will serve as a place to hook you up to the medicine when receiving chemotherapy. It can be felt and seen protruding from your skin. Doctors and nurses can access it by inserting a needle to draw blood and put medications into your body as well. It comes in handy to keep from constantly sticking your arms with needles to inject medicine and draw blood.

When receiving chemotherapy, It usually takes a few hours to receive all of the medicine necessary. A chemotherapy port is accessed by the nurse and the drugs used to fight cancer are sent into your body via the port. Before putting a needle in the port, a nurse will ask if you want to have the area numbed with some freezing spray before inserting the needle. The needle is big, but with numbing spray, you won’t feel it very much at all.  Then, in goes the cancer fighting drugs to hopefully save your life.

The chemotherapy port is an excellent idea and will be welcomed when all of the blood-taking and medicine injecting comes along. It is so much better than waiting impatiently and painfully for a technician to find a vein in your arm. Sometimes, cancer patients who are on chemotherapy find themselves in the hospital for low white blood cell counts. When this happens, they are put in a clean room for neutropenia and hooked up to an IV for fluids and antibiotics.  It allows the nurses to access you in one place and then they can put medication in your body and take fluids out through the IV tube. It is painless and makes the stay to get healthy a little bit better.