Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
This Port Might Just Save My Life — And My Veins
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The journey through cancer treatment is filled with unexpected turns, moments of vulnerability, and surprising sources of strength. In this deeply personal subscriber episode, I take you through my recent experience getting a chemotherapy port installed – a necessary step forward in my battle against cancer.
From the moment I entered the hospital, facing concerns about my ongoing infection and abnormal blood work, to the surreal experience of waking up during the procedure itself, this episode offers an unfiltered glimpse into what cancer patients actually experience. I describe the physical sensations of having this device implanted near my heart, complete with the medical team "jackhammering" on my chest to create the pocket for the port.
Beyond the medical details, this episode explores the emotional landscape of serious illness. I reflect on how this journey has affected my wife, who bears the tremendous burden of caregiving with unwavering support. Her experience reminds us that cancer affects not just the patient but everyone who loves them. I share my raw thoughts about confronting mortality after believing myself "invincible" for too long, acknowledging that I delayed treatment while pursuing alternative approaches.
Despite the difficulties, gratitude remains at the heart of this story. I'm thankful for compassionate healthcare providers, for modern medical interventions like this port that will preserve my veins through treatment, and for the community surrounding me with love and prayers. Though I've reached this point later than ideal, my faith remains strong as I move forward with treatment.
Have you experienced serious illness yourself or supported someone through it? Your compassion for patients and caregivers alike can make all the difference in their journey. Subscribe to follow my ongoing story and join a community dedicated to facing life's greatest challenges with courage and hope.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and you're listening to a subscriber episode of the Healthy Living Podcast, and I really want to thank everybody who is recently subscribed. And today I want to acknowledge one and just realize not only is this giving you access to very personal content and my hope is that more and more people will want to join me, as we're really sharing deep emotional connections to our healing journeys in this way, our healing journeys in this way but, either way, I'm sharing my journey as I'm healing myself from cancer and hopefully, I'm getting closer at the worst point of this right now. And today we're going to talk about the port that I just recently had installed. We're going to talk about the port that I just recently had installed, and so we went down and everything got approved. But remember, if you haven't listened to any of these, there's a lot of subscriber episodes and I encourage you to go back to the beginning. Then you'll really get the whole story.
Speaker 1:The reason I'm doing this on the podcast is so that I don't have to retell the story, but unfortunately, as this has become more painful and I'm getting less sleep, my ability to go back and remember where I've been has diminished some. That's another reason I'm doing this in real time and photographing and doing everything in real time so that at least we're documenting the truth. Remember, this is about the truth. This is actually what's happening, not what people are saying or people are hearing what people are thinking. Again, if you haven't heard this before, I encourage you strongly to go get John Kuhn's the Structure of Scientific Revolution and read it. It really can tell you about how and why things happen in science and why things seem a certain way sometimes, why we assume things sometimes and why we're wrong so many times. And I talk a lot about these truths and again, I'm sharing an experience, and this is my truth as I see it and as I've experienced it, and I'm sharing it with you as straightforward and raw as I can.
Speaker 1:So I go in and remember I um, I'm still struggling with this infection on the tumor and it's been weeping a little bit and I'm doing everything I can to clear it up. I'm now, you know, a couple of days into antibiotics. This is Friday, it's now. It's now Monday morning. I didn't record anything over the weekend, but I go in and I get my blood work. I've had more blood work done in the last couple of months than I've had in my whole life put together, and it just keeps sucking blood out of me. And remember, the last set of blood work came up abnormal high uh white blood cell count. And you know they're gonna. They're gonna cancel this stuff if everything isn't going right. And, yeah, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to take this.
Speaker 1:I, I, this thing's getting more and more oppressive, regardless of everything I've done all the oxygen therapy, all the fasting, all the methionine restriction diet I mean gosh, I can tell you for sure I would be dead if I hadn't been doing all the things I'm doing and all the prayers and all the everything. This is a fully stacked operation here and we are doing everything that can be done, but it's still pushing forward. I waited too long, long and it got too big and too strong, but we're we're gonna knock this motherfucker down and that's what we're doing right now. So, anyways, I get the blood work done, then we go over sitting and sitting in line and meanwhile I've got my little, my little uh tissue and I'm just like dabbing it every time I can feel it get a little damp and just going okay, just hopefully this is just not going to be an issue. And then we finally get brought in and uh, you know, they give you a, they give you a gown to change in these little socks with padded bottoms of the feet. Wife's sitting there next to me and you know she's doing great, but it's so rough on her. Anybody who's listening to this, who knows my wife, please be kind and reach out to her. She's going through so much. I wish I could do more for her, but it's harder on her, I think, than it is on me, and I couldn't imagine if it was on the other side. So I couldn't even imagine what she's going through. But, man, please have empathy for a caretaker if you know somebody is going through something like this.
Speaker 1:So then they come in and they start you know, some of them remember that I was there a few days ago and oh, you're back. Huh, yep, yep, they cleared me, everything's good and uh. So they show me the port and it's this metal device. Looked pretty big. I didn't think it was going to be that big and uh, it's got this kind of hard silicone, uh bladder thing on it and wires and catheter inside of a catheter and they sort of explain how they're gonna open me up and they're gonna put a decision kind of near the heart and they're gonna tap into the vein there. They're gonna ram this catheter through the vein, they're going to carve out like a pocket and stick this thing in there and I'm like, wow, that doesn't sound very fun. And so they go through and through this whole thing. Everybody that comes in is asking me you know what's your name, date of birth, do you know why you're here? And everybody's, you know, they're just double-checking Everybody's. You know, want to be sure, this is a teaching hospital and everybody has been beautiful, everybody's been kind.
Speaker 1:Once in a while I run into a little glitch, but for the most part I've been treated so well by this team, treated so well by this team and, regardless of the financial hardship through all this, this treatment has been, the care has been amazing. Anyways, and the anesthesiologist comes through and he says well, you know, know, we're going to give you a general anesthetic, which is like an iv drip, and we're going to give you, um, you know, some pain and some anxiety and and you're gonna, basically, you're gonna go to sleep, but, but you're not gonna be under general anesthetic, so you'd be breathing under your own, under your own power. I guess that's the difference under general anesthetic. So you'd be breathing under your own, under your own power. I guess that's the difference in general anesthetic is they breathe for you as well. Um and uh, and and I may be getting the terminology wrong on this, but basically they put an iv in my hand, in my arm, and they start talking about you know whatnot. They hook up this monitor and so it's basically, I'm sure, checking my O2 level and my heart rate and about once every five or ten minutes it checks my blood pressure and you hear the little thing bleeping and bleeping, and I remember I'm still tired and hurting. I can barely sit in any one place for very long and I know this thing's still weeping on me a little bit. My wife's dabbing me off every once in a while, and so we're getting closer.
Speaker 1:The surgeon comes in and he same thing. You understand why you're here and this and that you know what you're going to be doing, and and uh, and then the one doctor. He says you know, your, your blood work came back abnormal. I says listen, listen, I'm on antibiotics. We did this a couple days ago, cleared it with the oncologist. This is urgent, she's cleared everything, we're good to go. And he didn't fight me.
Speaker 1:I felt like frigging Yoda for a second. You know, this is not the droid you're looking for. I thought they were going to try to shut this thing down again. Just for a second I'm like, no, please don't, let's just go forward. We need to move forward. And so, uh, then they go. Okay, well, we're going to begin get you going. They're going to wheel you in there. And so my wife, she takes off because she can't be in the surgical room.
Speaker 1:And next thing, I remember I wake up and I'm in this surgery room up and I'm in this, I'm in the surgery room and I'm hearing them talking and they're literally pushing on my chest like felt, like they were jackhammering on me. I don't know what they were probably making that tunnel or that pocket, whatever it was. And and I hear uh take a deep breath. And and so they knew they, they knew I was awake and I said, okay, I'm good. And uh, I said, just, you're, you're doing fine. And uh, I was thinking, wow, I can feel this. And it wasn't terrible pain or anything, it was just I could feel it and I could.
Speaker 1:I know they were ramming a catheter down my vein and I'm like feeling this thing pushing on me and I'm like whoa kind of tripping for a second, but I'm like, okay, I'm not suffering here, I'm okay, I'm not suffering here, I'm okay, I'm not. You know, I wasn't paralyzed, I wasn't anything I could. I was fairly, fairly conscious and they said well, you, you woke up, huh, you were snoring and I was like I, I guess so, and so it all kind of was a bit of a blur. That's why I'm glad I'm able to record this. I'm getting ready to head out to my chemo session right now and I just enough time to record this and um.
Speaker 1:So then they next thing, I know, um, I said, okay, you're done, and they wheeled me out and I've got some tape and some glue and some stitches and you know they cautioned me that. You know this part can be used for everything. It can be used for vitamin C, it can be used for contrast, for a CT scan, but you just got to make sure that the nurses that are going to use this are being super careful and you know that this thing stays super clean. I said, all right, I'll babysit this thing like it's my own baby. And they sent me home and they said just go easy, you know, don't lift anything more than like a jug of milk for a couple of weeks. And said no sauna until this thing's healed. But other than that, you know, just don't let it get infected, don't let the incision open back up, and you can take a shower after a day and just just go easy. And so I just let it sit for a day and didn't do anything really. And then yesterday I did take a shower, peeled off the dressing and it's all glued up. You can see the incisions are pretty nice and clean. The deeper one, or the the one near my heart, is really tight. The one up above near my shoulder, is really tight. The one up above near my shoulder is a little more painful, but I think there's a lot more nerves there and it seems like it's not as tight. But I think they stuffed more things in less space. So I think they did a great job. I'm grateful.
Speaker 1:As I sat in the cancer group yesterday, I realized the importance of this port and the value of it to me. Right now, as I'm sitting here, it will save my veins for whatever I need right now. Again, I don't know where I'm going from this point forward, what I'm going to have to go through, but remember, I have done everything that can be done. I just got to this too late. I believed in my body, I believed that I was invincible, I believed that this was not cancer, as the doctor told me.
Speaker 1:And here I am, and I'm here to teach you all how to get through a tough spot like this. To get through a tough spot like this, and I am hopeful and my faith is strong. And, as much as this is difficult, I feel the support and the love of all the people that are truly around me and matters. So if you've got somebody in your life that's going through a rough spot, please listen to this and show some compassion, show some empathy, show some support, and you know you can be part of a solution rather than part of a problem, and so for that I thank you all. Right, I hope you find this entertaining and informational, inspirational, inspirational or even more, and just thank you so much for being a part of it. Talk next time.
