Goodbye portacath....hello 10 days on the couch

My portacath sticking out below the skin.

I feel like a bit of a fraud writing a blog about running when I’m currently not running, but it’s only temporary and for a good reason – I had my portacath removed last week. 

In case you’re not familiar with a portacath, it is the little device that a surgeon implants in your chest. In the picture I’ve posted here you can see the port sticking out, just beneath the skin. A catheter line connects the port to a large vein. Here is a diagram that shows how a portacath works.


I received my chemotherapy drugs and Herceptin through the port (and antibiotics when I had an infection) and also had all my blood tests taken through it.  It was far easier for medical staff to get a needle in through the portacath than try to search for a vein in my arm. (I can’t have needles in my left arm because I had my axillary lymph nodes removed on the left side and the veins in my right arm seemed to go into hiding after I had just one chemo infusion through them.)

Anyway, the surgery means I can’t run for 10 whole days to avoid infection and let the wound heal. When my surgeon removed the portacath last Thursday, he commented that it looked a bit like a flying saucer, which was appropriate because having it in made me feel like a bit of an alien. Actually it made me feel like a cyborg – I felt like I should have been able to attach a cable and download new languages or learn kung fu through it.

As grateful as I was to have the port in during the past 18 months or so, I was equally grateful to see it go. During the surgery I asked my surgeon if I could keep the port. He replied: “Is your house full of junk?” He clearly thought he was operating on a hoarder. To be fair he’s not the first person to think the idea of keeping the device is weird. When I told an old friend, she asked if I had pickled the boob I had removed and stored it in a jar in the larder.

Now that’s just creepy.

I’m thinking of having a necklace made out of it actually (the portacath that is, not the pickled boob) - a little UFO pendant. That’s if they let me have it - watch this space.