The C Word – A New Battle Day 255 - A Tough Week

Never take moments for granted.  That has to be the mantra for anyone with cancer.  Some days are good and you feel hopeful.  The next day could be bad and you lose sight of hope.

We have had one of those weeks.  After a pretty good overall week last week where George got some things accomplished.  He tinkered in the garage some, always a good source of enjoyment for him.  He did a few things outside. 

On Monday things had gone pretty well.  We went for an evening stroll.  Shortley after that he was experiencing pain.  I should preface this with the fact that one of the things he had done earlier in the day was putting a couple of large planters back into the wooden stands he’d built for them.  Considering that he won’t carry the laundry basket, this did require some concerted effort on his part.

At bedtime he took a strong pain medication to see if it would help.  While he did fall asleep pretty quickly, within a couple of hours he woke up still experiencing pain.  The decision was made to take a trip to the ER to see if we could either figure out what the cause was or to at least rule out “bad” stuff.

We were there quite a long time considering most of our trips.  It took a while for the CT scan to get ordered up.  All the bloodwork came back fine. The pain medication took a long time for them to get to us.  We had arrived in the ER at about 11:45PM and it was close to 2:00AM before they finally gave it!  The CT scan showed nothing acute or significant.  They compared it to the Sept. 2016 scan rather than the one just a few weeks ago. 

At 3:30AM we headed for home where George quickly fell asleep until nearly 10:00AM.  I, on the other hand, took over an hour to wind down, falling asleep at 5AM only to get up at 7AM and head to work.  Fortunately, I only work four hours a day!  (In a few weeks, I won’t have to worry about that anyore.)

We figured that, perhaps, George maybe pulled or strained a muscle from lifting the planter box.  The pain originally was in the groin and radiated towards the back.  By the next day it was mainly in the lower back.  He took pain meds on Tuesday and then converted to Advil which he has been taking pretty consistently since then.  It has helped some, but it has not gone away completely.

He is frustrated.  He is tired of being tired.  Between his back, belly and tailbone he experiences discomforts nearly all of the time.  He is growing bored sitting at home yet he isn’t feeling well enough or strong enough to get out and about too much.  Even yesterday when we went to the grocery store I could tell he wasn’t feeling well.  Normally he likes to walk up and down the aisles looking at things (and putting extra things in the cart), but he wanted only to go exactly to the aisles for the half dozen things on my grocery list.  Today at Costco it was the same.  That’s just not like him at all, so I know he is not feeling great. 

Last night I brought up the fact that maybe it is time to look into palliative care.  Palliative care may be able to help alleviate some of his discomfort so that he feels like moving about again.  Maybe they have something that can take the edge off the pain but doesn’t make him tired.  Unfortunately, our oncologist at Stanford Cancer Center has just this past week moved and we have to see someone new.  We put in a call today to get an appointment with a new oncologist that we can meet and he can refer us to their palliative care department.  George is not exactly thrilled about having to bring another oncologist up to speed on his cancer.  Maybe we’ll be lucky and the new doc will have some basic knowledge. 

It is hard to watch him going through this.  I feel helpless because there is nothing I can do.  At least not in the way of physical comfort.  I can only be there for him for emotional support.  I still wish this was more I could do for him. 

In a few weeks I do hope to do something BIG to help bring more awareness to PMP.  I am actually a little bit excited to be able to do this.  I can’t go into details because George and I are the only ones who know so far.  For my faithful followers, stay tuned!