I was deported on Monday afternoon.
Yep! That's the way the very professional and efficient yet, cute and fun nurses (and not young teenybopper women, either) at the Winchester Medical Center add a little political humor into the procedure of removing my chemo infusion chest port. They said I was being "deported."
It was a short procedure and they put me out under a very light anesthesia. I was, more or less, awake again before they moved me out of the procedure room back to the prep/recovery room. They kept me in recovery for about another hour or so.
For those readers who have had an infusion port installed in your chest for chemotherapy treatments for cancer, you know what this port is and what it's all about. It makes the patient's life much easier because the nurses and technicians don't have to keep looking for a good vein in your hand or arm to infuse the toxic chemotherapy drugs into your circulatory system. After a while, it frequently gets hard for them to locate a good vein. It can become quite painful for many patients. But, the port is surgically (a minor procedure) installed in the patient's chest. Once installed, it produces a small lump in the chest wall. When the port is not being utilized, it must be flushed every six to eight weeks with a saline solution that must be done by a nurse. So, if it's no longer in use, it does become an inconvenience. However, the oncologists like to keep them installed, typically, for a couple of years just in case there is a recurrence and they need to go through another course of chemotherapy. Mine was in nearly 2 1/2 years. Here is what the little port device looks like.
