Good days and bad days

Good days and bad days, that's the life of someone which cancer. In support groups other cancer survivors have talked about answering the "how are you?" questions with "today is a good (or bad) day". In my case it's often good hours and bad hours, as each day usually has a combination of both. Lately, the bad hours have been from back pain and sometimes stomach pain. In fact I was woken up at 5am (definitely not a time I am ever awake unless I am forced to be) with terrible gas pain pushing up against the top of my ribs. My digestive system is definitely not the same since my hysterectomy and all the radiation I have had and recently it's gone up a notch in it's sensitivity. This makes sense since radiation late effects are just that, late effects, they can happen years after the actual radiation. I think the Megace I am taking to fight the cancer is making things worse in this regard, since gassiness is one of the side effects. Just as long as all it is is gas I can deal with it (poor A. though was woken up at 5am to the sounds of me burping for 5 minutes till I got that bubble to move). Just as long as it's not an intestinal blockage or something serious like that, which unfortunately is one of the late effect problems that can come up.

So, after I get the pain to calm down I then find that my back/hip/thigh is throbbing in pain. Since my last scan, my back pain increased a bit and so has my ibuprofen use. Lately I find that I need three to get through the day, one at breakfast, one around 5 or 6pm and one before bed. (This may not seem like much, but long term daily ibuprofen use has it's issues, in my case just that small dose raises my blood pressure and may be causing some kidney damage, but I am between a rock and a hard place because I really need it to function). Some days I take the 2nd one at 7 or 8 pm and then forget to take one before bed because I feel fine. The problem with that is that it doesn't get me through till morning. So last night I laid there knowing that I should get up and take one but was tired and before I knew it was asleep. So I paid for it early this morning. I put the heating pad on (it is permanently plugged in next to my bed as I use it every night) for a while and hoped it would calm down enough to fall back asleep. After 45 minutes I finally gave up and got up and took an ibuprofen on an empty stomach and went back to bed. It didn't bother my stomach luckily and after a while between that and the heating pad the pain went away and I slept till 9am.

The back pain thing is not usually predictable though (except for the morning thing and even that isn't every day). I could wake up feeling fine and get dressed and showered and eat breakfast feeling fine and then all of a sudden be in terrible pain. I'll put heat on it for a few hours and it could go away and I'm fine again for hours. Sometimes I get in the car and it hurts to drive (even with my special back pillow which really does help a lot) but then after a while it works itself out. Other times it just keeps going. I honestly at am a loss as to what the cause of this pain is, the tumor, muscles, radiation damage, maybe some arthritis, stress, position, or a combination of all of them. All I know is that pretty much every day for the last 16 months I spend a portion of my day in pain and that at least lately (this changes) I have some time where I forget about it.

It colors my moods, without the pain I am generally an optimistic person, when in pain I can become instantly depressed and pessimistic, and it can lift rapidly when the pain goes away again. I guess I'm lucky that I can bounce back from it pretty quickly, but during those long periods where I got very little if any relief it made it quite hard. I am still doing acupuncture but it's not a miracle cure. It definitely helps, and I am finding that I really have to go regularly or I can regress quite rapidly. In fact I have an appt. tomorrow morning which I will most definitely be going to.

So, despite the rocky early morning start, as of now I'm having a good day. Let's hope it stays that way.