Emily had her port removed last Friday

I just wanted to update & share some info.

Emily had her port removed April 29th @ Children’s Hospital in MI. Let me tell you, it was a GREAT experience. I HIGHLY recommend this hospital should anyone need it. They took fantastic care of us & were really great with Emily.

We met with Dr. Michael Klein right before Emily’s surgery. We discussed the concerns about her port getting stuck because she had it for 4 years 7 months. We decided, if it was stuck, that he would make a small incision at her neck to see if he could loosen it from there. If he was unsuccessful he would detach the actual port & leave the catheter in. We could then make the decision, at a later date, to leave the catheter in forever or to go to a cardiac surgeon to have it removed.

Apparently the cardiac surgeon can go into the vein with a sheath that goes over the catheter. The sheath will attach itself to the catheter & then the cardiac surgeon can pull the catheter out. The procedure is done under general anesthesia for children. I’m not sure if they would do it under twilight for adults.

There was a recent study suggesting it was perfectly safe to leave the catheter in the blood vessel forever without any negative effects.

The surgeon did not need to do those things as the port came out. He did have to cut some of the muscle that attached itself to the port & he did have to tug a bit to get it to come out. But it came out & Emily was in & out of surgery in 20 minutes.

She spent an hour in the 1st recovery room & then we were called back into another recovery room where we spent another hour with her. She came out of anesthesia just fine (she has been a thrasher in the past & the anesthesiologist assured me he would give her something to help with that). She didn’t even cry!

When she was brought to us she was sitting up in bed & eating a popsicle. We sat with her for an hour & then she was released to come home.

Her incision was closed up with dissolvable stitches & covered up with 3 steri-strips.

Emily has been just fine since then! She was running around in the house 3 hours after getting home.

Kelly