The Colon Club

DH has a lot of trouble with ports. He had one installed that never worked right. The replaced it with a power port. It worked great for about six months. Now, they can't get bloody return from it. Anyone else have port problems?

I don't generally but a gentleman who started chemo the same day as I, had a problem with getting blood from his. He was sent to have some kind of test to see if the chemo would go through the port correctly.

Turns out stuff will go in but his body creates a 'flap' (?) at the end of the line that keeps things from coming back out of the line. He gets his blood draw from the vein and can still use the port for the chemo.

I wish I could remember what they called it. See if they can test that the port works for stuff going in.

Sometimes they have a problem with mine but if I lay down, when they do have a problem, it fixes whatever issue the port has.

I've seen other people not be able to draw blood from their port but able to get chemo through it. Every so often with mine I have to lay back and raise my arm for them to be able to draw blood.

I love my port. Makes blood work and then treatment so much easier and less uncomfortable for long periods. Not to mention, Oxaliplatin can be hard on veins. The only time I had an issue getting blood return in the port was oddly immediately before attempted liver surgery in March. So they had me get up and dance a jig and soon I started to bleed. It was odd, never had any issues since.

inorganic8 wrote:DH has a lot of trouble with ports. He had one installed that never worked right. The replaced it with a power port. It worked great for about six months. Now, they can't get bloody return from it. Anyone else have port problems?

I had a fibrin sheath build up at the end of the catheter. They would clear it with TPA. They didn't like doing that every time, so I just had the port replaced after only 6 months. They can do an angiogram to make sure chemo is going to the right place if they can't get a blood return, but the flush goes through. My nurse didn't like that idea because she felt she couldn't be sure the catheter was in the right place without a blood return and you can't be having an angiogram every infusion.

veckon wrote:I love my port. Makes blood work and then treatment so much easier and less uncomfortable for long periods. Not to mention, Oxaliplatin can be hard on veins. The only time I had an issue getting blood return in the port was oddly immediately before attempted liver surgery in March. So they had me get up and dance a jig and soon I started to bleed. It was odd, never had any issues since.

I hope the nurses ask me to dance a jig. I'm going to bust out some MC Hammer U Can't Touch This.