Sailing into harbour.

Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand,
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.

— William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra: IV, xiv

We now have our "sprightly port". Or to be more precise, Jody has hers.

She's been outfitted with a Deltec PORT-A-CATH® II Dual-lumen, Low Profile™ System with PolyFlow® Polyurethane Catheter. Despite my encouragement, however, she opted not to get the chrome rims on it.

You'd think, since she was successfully stuck ten days in a row for IVF, that Jody has veins of steel and that putting in an IV "only" every three weeks would be a cakewalk. Unfortunately, that leaves out the chemo factor: the drugs she'll be receiving will weaken her veins, making successive sticks harder and harder. And because she'll be having chemo for 3-1/2 months, and Herceptin for a full year, she'll need something to make the process easier and more reliable. Hence the port.

I took the liberty of sketching a brief diagram of her while she was in recovery today:

Okay, I confess. That illustration was actually poached from this page, which goes into some detail about the port's benefits and how it works.

Jody has some pain in her shoulder, but is basically fine. She was actually back in classes at Columbia later today! (She's pretty conked out now though). Some notes on the day:

• Jody, after spending two-plus hours on Monday in la-la land following her egg retrieval, decided to be more firm with today's anesthesiologist about starting her on a small dose. He was a great guy, and happily complied with her request, noting that she certainly should know her own body by now and since she's the one going through all the crap, it's only fair she get to call some of the shots. The result of the lower dose: Jody was completely alert and downright chatty not ten minutes after her procedure ended. It's nice when the doctors actually let the patients take part in their caregiving.


• I made a joke about Jody getting stopped at airports while she has the port implanted, but the attendant simply shook his head, grinned, and said, "Nope. Titanium". Pretty neat, huh?


• I drank scotch with an acting buddy and Simon Russell Beale last night. This item has nothing to do with the port insertion (other than the fact that I was a running quite a bit slower than usual this morning). But you know, it was still pretty cool. :)

Tomorrow marks Day One of Jody's chemo/Herceptin regimen. That means roughly a year from now (if the planets align properly) we'll be celebrating her last Herceptin dose and, once again, putting this all behind us. So put a mark in your calendar for a whopping party with us in early February '07!

Editor's note: Blogger was down last night, so this first appeared on the site Friday morning, but it's dated for Thursday evening because that's when I wrote it.