Here’s something many patients don’t anticipate: port access often gets more painful over time, not less. You might assume that your body would get used to the needle, that repeated access would somehow become easier. For some patients, that’s true. But for many others, the opposite happens—and the reason is scar tissue.

If you have a chest port and use numbing cream, you’ve almost certainly been told to cover it with plastic wrap. The instructions sound simple enough: apply a blob of lidocaine cream over your port, tear off a piece of plastic wrap, press it over the cream, and wait 30 to 60 minutes for the numbing to take effect. Nurses recommend it. Doctors suggest it. It’s the standard advice across infusion centers nationwide.