Should I get a port?

Yes. Carboplatin and/or Taxol really messes up your veins. After an infusion or two they'll start having a hard time finding a vein and it will be miserable. Love my port.

Thanks. Not what I wanted to hear but appreciate you taking the time to answer.

Yes! I agree, a port is the best way to go. My hands were so sore after getting five infusions. I have a port for over 2 years now and I just go to the infusion center and I never feel them place the IV needle because I apply lidocaine cream an hour before over the port.
My tip is make sure you get a surgeon who specializes in ports.

I did not get a port for chemotherapy or immunotherapy but regret it now. Some IV nurses struggled to find a vein. It took more than one try sometimes to get the catheter working. There were two skilled nurses who were gifted to make it look easy. Phlebotomists had difficulty to draw blood and bruised up my veins. During chemotherapy blood was drawn weekly, after that every 3 weeks for a year. It caused me additional stress not knowing which nurse or phlebotomist would be assigned and what skill level they had.

In an other discussion one group member noted that the port
can get "plugged" or "sore". While I was waiting for an infusion one patient expressed disappointment about her port. There was no time
for more details.

I was not given a choice and had the port. It bothered me more psychologically than physically, but I used the lidocaine and it was fine. My main complaint is that insertion and removal (by Interventional Radiation) frightened me and I wished that I could have been given a twilight drug. When I questioned this afterwards, I was told that only local anesthetics are used and was made to feel judged for being weak.

YES YES YES a thousand times yes...those drugs are REALLY rough on the veins and trust me you won't regret it... IR gave me sedation aka twilight during both insertions and also when i had it removed the first time... hardest thing i've experienced with a port was not sleeping on my belly the first few weeks after insertions. i don't even need the lidocaine for the chemo needles to go in, the lab does my port access each time to draw labs and for a person who's naturally a "hard stick" when they told me i had to go back on chemo due to the cancer coming back my first comment to the doc was get me an appt to get port put back in before chemo even starts...got chemo the same day it went in..

I didn’t know I could have a port at first. After going through the usual taxol and carboplatin, and then just carboplatin a couple of times, the nurses had heaps of trouble finding a vein.
After it took 5 times to try and find one, I put my foot down and demanded a port! That was 10 years ago, and I have not regretted it. It stops you from ending up being a pin cushion! It also means that your hands are free during an infusion, so you can do things while you’re in the chair.
I also give an emphatic YES to getting a port!

I went through 2 courses of 6 infusions each with carbo and taxol without a port. I then started Avastin for 4 months, still no port. Then I started Elahere last November and asked for the port. I have had no problems bless with my port and it makes life much easier for my infusion nurses who don’t have to search for a vein. I held off on the port because I was not psychologically ready for it. In retrospect I should have gotten it a lot sooner.

I agree, the twilight drug during insertion is crucial. I only got a very low dose and could hear everything. Those are memories I wish I didn’t have.

Don’t feel rushed to decide. You should be able to opt for a port at any point along your treatment. 💜🙏🏽

@ffr Only local anesthetics? Some of us - and I would definitely be included in this group - need medication to get through these frightening procedures. You are a cancer patient and already frightened by the diagnosis and what's to come. This really bothers me a lot and I hope going forward all of us will ask questions so we know what's going to happen and if we need anti-anxiety medication .

Sometimes, we learn the hard way because we don’t know what we don’t know until we are into it.
I had a meltdown at both insertion and removal and felt unnecessarily judged both times.
Thankfully, there were kind nurses who tried to support me but the PAs and techs just wanted to get on with it. Looking back, these were the only times I ever fell apart from diagnosis day until now. 😞