[Jackie07]

As a patient who had experienced 'undiagnosed' recurrence for 4 years, I actually feel your doctor is one worth retaining. He obviously is concerned with your welfare. He was probably just trying to to give you the information (that you are at high risk for recurrence) in a more implicit way since you'd been anxious to get the port out.

It is standard practice to keep the port for one year after treatment ends. I had my first port out a year after treatment ended (my 'good' arm is actually the bad arm because I'd had paralysis after my first brain tumor surgery more than 20 years ago) Because it's always hard to draw blood from my arms - showed my 'stabbed' finger to my oncologist one time, so I kept the port more than a year after the treatment for the recurrence had ended (at 22 weeks). I was told to get my port 'accessed' every six weeks and I faithfully followed the schedule until I became tired of the nagging - he acted like I was afraid of having recurrence again or having attachment to the port or something ...

Eventually I had the port removed (at about the standard one year after completing treatment = two year after my recurrence diagnosis) by the original surgeon when I received notice that she's leaving the area. And I've got a new oncologist since my oncologist had moved to a hospital near where he lives - about the same time the surgeon had left. My new oncologist is young and nice and does not have the bias that I might be hypochondriac ... [The technicians have been able to use a very thin needle (butterfly?)to access my left (weak) arm - the last two times they were even successful at the first poke!]

Correction: I think I might have kept my 2nd port more than 3 years after treatment had ended.