Star date 03162023
Forgive me for the long stretch of imagination in this post, but somehow I feel this year I have been inducted into a “collective.”
In the year 2023, I became a member of an elite group and wear a foreign access device under my skin. I am connected to people with cancer. People who have had it, are in remission or currently treating their disease. I am connected to tubes which introduce foreign substances into my bloodstream.
I’m now part of The Borg.
For non-Star Trek fans, who have no idea what I’m talking about, The Borg has been an evil adversary of the Star Trek Federation. Members of The Borg are cybernetic humanoids or cyborgs. In one episode of a Star Trek spinoff, Captain Jean-Luc Picard had been captured and made a part of the collective.
Through surgery, Captain Picard had been assimilated and parts of his human form were replaced with bionic alternatives. As part of the collective, all Borgs were made up of human and drone parts, collectively acting as one with the queen being the only autonomous player.
Sure, we don’t have an autonomous queen, but our collective dutifully enters a room, occupies a chair, and connects to a hopefully “life-giving” apparatus filling our bloodstream with a combination of chemicals. We are one in our battle against cancer.
As a member of The Borg, there is implanted on the left side of my chest a port that allows me to be connected to this collective. The device is no bigger round than a quarter and has a “target” of three protruding nubs. It will remain under my skin near my clavicle on the left side of my chest until a future day when I might be able to fight free of The Borg.
The target which makes it easier for the nurses to make the connection to the IV was placed under my skin by a very nice and handsome young doctor named Michael J. It was a pleasant and fascinating experience, that is until the pain meds wore off.
FIRST, THE BIOPSY
Before the port placement, Dr. Michael was ordered to biopsy a lymph node at the base of my neck. This was necessary to determine what kind of cancer cells caused the pain in my jaw and ear. Were they the same as in my lung? That would be the best-case scenario.
In late December and until I began treatment, my right jaw and ear ached. It puzzled my doctor and while we checked the lymph nodes that usually swell high on the neck with a cold. We did not investigate further downward. I’m thinking I didn’t realize I had lymph nodes at the base of my neck. It had cancer.
Once again, we made the trip to the “Irrational” radiation department deep in the hospital halls. After the usual preparations were made, I was wheeled into a room with lots of blinking monitors and foreign-looking equipment under pleasant low light. The drugs must have made me sleepy and a little “talky.” Sedation brings out the best of you. Maybe I was just nervous. I talk a lot when I’m nervous.
Two nurses busied themselves while the doctor and I talked about baklavas and skiing, among other things. If I remember correctly, he grew up in Bismarck.
When it was time, I was asked to turn my head to the left. There on the monitor was an image in black and white — my lymph node.
I’m not sure how that picture got there but there was a round-ish area darker than the background moving with each breath like it was embedded in thick liquid. It’s difficult to describe but it was like an alien virus under scrutiny in Dr. McCoy’s medical bay. Alien in the sense I had never seen inside my neck before.
Dr. Michael and I were talking about that image the whole time he was readying his tools for biopsy.
“Wow, it looks so big,” I said.
“That’s because the picture is enlarged.”
I’m not sure if he was operating with the image or looking at my neck but he proceeded to tell me what was going to happen next. It involved a gun with a large needle. Naturally, it was to poke the lymph node. Once it hit the target, he would pull the trigger and grab a tissue sample.
“You will hear the punch,” he said.
“I want to see it. The stuff you are taking.”
That would be okay, he said. It was fascinating to watch. I wasn’t feeling a thing even though he fired several shots into that node.
“One more. Is that okay?”
Like I could stop you now, I was thinking. The last poke was deep and the needle looked much larger than before. Dr. Michael pulled the trigger and this tongue came out of the needle and grabbed a portion of my lymph node before retreating into the needle.
It happened quickly and I’m not sure why, but I started laughing heartily at the image which set off a laughing reaction in the room. Like a virus, laughing is contagious, you know.
“I could use a few more patients like you,” he said.
“I am determined to never lose my sense of humor about this whole ordeal.”
One of the nurses appeared to my left holding a slide. I raised my hand from beneath the sheet covering my body.
“Oh, no. Don’t touch it,” she said. Oops.
On the slide was a tiny bit of crystal clear fluid tainted slightly reddish around the edges.
“That’s it?”
I was amazed at how small the sample was after seeing how big the needle was. You know how when you have a pimple or something on your skin out of eyesight and it feels enormous? In the end, it’s just a teeny tiny bump. My tiny bump just happened to be full of cancer. I was too doped up to give it a second thought. In my eyes, the sample was beautiful.
The biopsy was complete and the doctor disappeared for a few minutes. The nurses did their thing, quickly covering my face with a paper tent. More claustrophobia. I panicked. More sedative. I relaxed.
NOW, THE PORT
More unknown sensations as I could “feel” the doctor slit my skin. Then, extreme pressure as he rammed the port through the slit and underneath my skin. It reminded me of forcing slices of lemon under a chicken breast’s skin before roasting it in the oven.
From the port, a tube needed to be placed, so another slit, and somehow placed into a blood vein. As you may have experienced, feeling pressure during surgery is not the same as feeling the pain of invasion. The real pain comes later.
While waiting to be released from the IR Radiation preparation area, the doctor came to check on me one last time. We had another pleasant visit.
We didn’t go out to eat after this procedure, I just wanted to sleep. That was before the drugs wore off.
That night, my body woke up. The area was so tender, swollen, and painful that I almost couldn’t sleep. I will never forget bending over to pick something off the floor and feeling like the weight of the port under my skin was about to drag me to the earth.
As it began to heal in the next two days, the pain lessened, the swelling went down and it began to itch. The nurses gave me strict orders to not pick at the surgical glue on the two cuts made in the skin.
This object, which is visible under tee shirts created an easy entry into a main artery to introduce cancer-killing chemicals to my body. Regardless of the ease of accessing my vein, the needle which I had yet to experience, but continue to at this time, pokes through the skin with every infusion. A necessary evil.
With this port and radiation helmet, my body has been invaded, altered if you may and I have likened my upcoming journey to belonging to a new collective. The Borg. No, our members are not evil, the cancer is evil, and there are many of us fighting this fight.
The many are all part of a collective, a group of survivors with ports and helmets and other such foreign parts.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand the importance of these procedures. But I am afraid. I am afraid of several things. One, will it work? Will I ever walk down my road again and say, “I feel so healthy?” Will my body survive the onslaught of radiation and chemo or will it wither and die with the cancer cells?
I am not looking forward to the next eight weeks and beyond. I do know that I am not alone, although in March, the only people we told were immediate family. I wanted to be alone.
And, yes, I still feel like I am part of a collective of people who have entered a special space.
To boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before.
INDYchildrendotme 
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