Porta-Cath Insertion

I finally had the porta-cath inserted yesterday. I was to have prophylactic IV antibiotics before the operation. One gram of Vancomycin was added to a 500 ml bag of Normal Saline and the drip started. Within 5 minutes I felt like thousands of mosquitoes were biting my back, feeling like an intense itching and prickling, my face went flushed and a wave of "oh, this can't be good" went through my body and I felt like I was going to faint. I called the nurse, she saw me and the medical machine flew into action. She stopped the drip, pushed me into recovery which luckily was next door. There was, also fortuitously, an anaesthetist visiting a patient, so I was given adrenaline, which by the way, feels very weird as you are aware of it rushing through your body causing your heart to thump and makes you want to throw up.
After a bit of recovery time they decided to go ahead with the procedure. I woke to find myself back in recovery, and yes the surgeon was wrong about the post-op pain, I had an intense pain in my chest at the op site. They gave me digesic and told me that I should try and sleep. About 30 mins later, after the tablets had had no effect at all, an X-ray guy arrived to take an in-bed chest x-ray to check the positioning of the implant. He started to raise the back of the bed and I felt like someone had cut open my chest and shoved an implant into it, and threaded a tube up into a major vein, oh wait, they had.
I think it was a combination of severe pain, frustration at being so very immobilised, and the effects of anaesthetic, allergic reaction and the adrenalin shot, but anyway I had just had enough and started crying. The nurses sprang into action as carers and advocates. My anaesthetist was saying that the protocols called for digesic for pain relief and that that should be enough. While one nurse stayed with me making me concentrate on my breathing, another took the anaesthetist aside and talked to him. A few minutes later she was back with an injection of something for more effective pain relief.
So it is the next day and the pain is subsiding and I have been pondering the nature of the way pain is experienced. When I feel strong, pain is manageable, when I am exhausted or disappointed or feeling fragile, pain is less bearable. I think that doctors often don't see how very individual the need for pain relief is, not just from patient to patient, but also from one episode in a patent's history to another.
I am thinking the worst is over now. I have been dreading this foreign thing being implanted into my body, close to my heart. I start chemo next week and I can start to count down the treatments till this is over.
Oct 12th. I am adding this for people who stumble across my rantings when they are about to have a porta-cath in. A few days after and I am just needing panadol for the pain, it settled very quickly, a vitamin B6 seemed to have helped, getting rid of a bit of fluid. Don't be fobbed off about pain relief. Ask the surgeon and the anaesthetist at the first meeting with them, say you want to have adequate anlgesia in recovery and insist on having a script to take home even though you may not need it. Ask when you can shower after the proceedure and how long before you can lift things. I was given far too little information. I am glad I had this port in, the alternative, a pic line, would have been worse for me. Resistence is futile.