Accessing his port and drawing blood...

The nurse wears a mask and takes out the clean new packet, cleans around the port to be ready for access...

Then she pokes the needle into one of the port holes, I believe there are 3 in his...

Now it is ready to draw blood...

First they flush it with saline…

 Then they draw a waste (a sample to discard…)

Then they draw the blood samples they need, then do another saline flush and put the heparin in. You need to flush and put heparin in every 6 to 7 weeks when you have a port. This is done often when you are on chemo, but if your check ups are more than 6 weeks apart you'd probably have to access and flush yourself…






Next you take the needle out and put a bandaid on it! Easy! ...

Then comes what I think is the hard part…Do I have cancer again? Austin says he doesn't mind the thoughts of dying, but he can't stand the thoughts of going through chemo again…Not his favorite thing he's ever done!…



The Doc was late this day so we had to wait a while…he is usually really quick!…


No cancer! Done, and time to sign up for next month and an upcoming scan!...

 Here we are waiting to schedule our next cat scan...














This is candy for patients, it helps with the metal taste in their mouth…






We are done! It is getting easier as each time it has come back negative. At first there was more anxiety about cancer returning. Tomorrow we go back for another scan and Thursday for results and more blood work, it's expensive and tiring, but necessary!
Austin decided to take his port out, it was sticking out of his skinny chest, so he had it removed and now he'll have blood drawn the normal way. I'll show pictures of him getting it removed next! Chow for now!