Bad Week: Much Pain

BAD WEEK:  It’s been a bad week, and today is even worse.  No one told me about ALL the effects of the chemo.  It seems chemo also reduces the body’s inflammation diseases like diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.  Even though the chemo is a horrible thing while taking it, and the after effects are equally horrible on your body – it did curb the pain of rheumatism for many months.  During chemo, I stopped taking blood pressure medicine, diabetic insulin, and medications/steroids for the arthritis.  It was hard to what a blessing that was because the sickness (puking and diarrhea) from the chemo overshadowed it.  But now every thing is pretty clear.  I’m taking all the medications again to control high blood pressure, diabetes and rheumatism.  And I am in pain constantly.  I can barely get out of bed in the mornings due to every bone and muscle in my body being sore.  I ache from head to toe.  Of course, that makes me worry more.  I worry that the pain may be covering up signs of the cancer spreading.  I worry that every little pain is something more than it should be.  I worry most of all about shooting pains in my head.  I have this one spot that aches off and on, that feels like my scalp is too tight or pulling in one little spot.  Same spot all the time.  I worry that it might be a cancer cell that spread to the brain.  Cells in the brain cause you to die very fast.  Sometimes, at night, my heart will beat very hard for a few minutes, like it’s really struggling, and I worry that the cells have metastasized to my heart.  I also have this little cough now, just when I lay down.  It’s just a puff cough, a couple times, and that’s all.  But I was told that my surgery, if I can find anyone to do it for free, will be refused if the tumor further invades my lung wall.  I wonder if the cough means it has invaded.  And yet, my tumor in my throat is not painful.  It does not seem to be blocking food at all.  I mention this because it is unusual in cases like mine – even lucky some say.  I know I should not expect it to last long.  Eventually the tumor will block my esophageal passage and I will starve to death unless I have a feeding tube placed in my stomach.  Of course, no one wants to that placement either.  It’s going to be a tricky minor surgery that involves pressure in the throat as they bypass the tumor to insert it from the inside out.  I know how this works, too.  They wait until I am too far gone to do it, so my possibilities of suing them for doing it wrong become nil.

I hurt all over all the time.  The pain feels like it comes from the bones.  I essentially hurt from the inside out.  It’s like my bones are causing the pain.  It hurts so deep inside the bone areas and seems to radiate out.  On top of the pain, I am still everywhere.  All my joints hurt, too.  I’m pretty sure it is the rheumatism and fibromyalgia.  I’ve always had a very high pain tolerance.  I’m allergic to so many medications, and one of them was Novocain used to numb you for dental work.  So, until I was in my late 30s, I had all dental work done without anesthetic.  My high pain tolerance helped a lot there.  Little did I realize that the high pain tolerance is probably due to extreme and wide spread neuropathy from diabetes.  Luckily, I have good teeth with only three small cavities over 50 years time.  Also, by the time I needed my wisdom teeth removed (just ten years ago), they had Lidocaine and I could take that.  I can deal with the pain.  I hate it, but I manage to survive it.  If I had to endure this type of pain from now on, I could keep going despite it.  I prefer the pain to leaving my baby and not seeing him grow-up.

All I want from life now is:  the contribution of surgery from UCLA to save my life.  If I cannot have that, then I want a little warning before I am too sick to control my circumstances, so I can die with dignity.  I prefer an insulin overdose to wasting away through starvation, brain cancer, or coma – with my family looking on  It’s okay if I suffer, but when it gets to the point they are suffering for me and along with me – then it’s time to go.