Flush!

I went in to the Cancer Hospital today for a port flush.  The nurse, who had drawn blood and flushed my port many times did the work and it went well.  Good red return so no need for a big anti-coagulant to flush it out.   TPA takes at least half an hour.

I saw the Nurse Navigator and said hello and also my oncologist - albeit socially not professionally.

It was fun bumping in to everyone, they all said I look better - I have hair now although I think it is a bit curlier than it use to be.


I got to see the scheduler, a nice young man Mary and I have come to know because of the many times we've scheduled appointments for me there.  He's done most of them.  

I gave my email address to him so he could keep me up to date on a couple of referrals he was setting up.

After I got home I received an email from him and made an appointment for next Tuesday with a physical therapist. I'll be seeing a neurologist at some point but that department will call me when they're finished reviewing my file.

All in all I'm doing pretty well.  

Occasional pain that doesn't last too long and sometimes I take drugs.

Oh! How I love the Pain!

It has been a fun week. 

I saw my family doctor Monday, and had a cavity filled by my dentist on Tuesday.  These experiences have been kinder to me than some other things I've had to experience in the last year.

Since I have been paying attention to my neck problem,  I've been feeling far less pain.  I take regular doses of Skelaxin.  It is because the little scrunched nerves all up and down my neck tighten up my muscles and cause them to spasm. 

And if I just ignore it, it will get worse.  And eventually feels like serious pain.  But it takes a while to get to the really bad pain so I have plenty of time to get a little something to take the pain away.


This morning I was unable to go back to sleep after waking up at 5:00 but my neck wasn't nearly as bad as it was when I had done nothing for it a couple of weeks ago.   I had taken some muscle relaxant and Aleve before going to bed and that was good for most of the night.  It would have lasted the whole night if I hadn't gotten up.

I'm pretty oblivious when I'm asleep.



I've informed my doctor that I'm in the process of making an appointment to see a neurologist and will see a physical therapist after that.  

My doctor wants me to get into physical therapy  and in our conversations has implied that I will need much less Skelaxin in the future.   He then described a device for stretching my neck to get a little space for my nerves between my somewhat compressed vertebra.

For some reason an image of a medieval torture device came to mind - modernized with upgraded leather straps and fine aluminum bracers.

The device he described fits around the neck and pulls the head - excuse me, my head, up to stretch the neck.

Will it really do any good?

I would just like to drug myself into oblivion but I doubt that those drugs will be prescribed.

I think the most serious pain med I will be getting for this pain is Advil.  With the help of a little muscle relaxant.  

Such is life.   Pain relief is not recreational.  But it is a pain.

So I'm stuck with this?

The MRI came out clear of cancer; but my neck does have problems; they just won't kill me unless my head falls off.

My doctor explained that I have:  Cervical Stenosis;  which is not that bad compared to cancer.

I'm not happy about that, but it means my neck problems won't grow on me like they did before.

I'm stuck with it and there is no quick fix.  Too bad.

Thud or Adventures in Claustrophobia

Although the tube extends an egregious number of feet, I feel that my head and body are going into the open door of a front loading automatic washer.

Naturally this is incorrect, since I know I will not be rotated.  But I will be mixed up.

In all such front-loaders, your body lies prone on a flat-bed rack which will insert you like some long and distended tongue into the slenderest of tubes.

There is a thin blue line down the length of the tube from end to end right up at the top so you can tell that they have you in there right side up.    There is not much room, and while I am being slid in I try to keep my arms in so they don't get scissored off by the sides of the machine.   All the while I'm in there I don't feel quite comfortable letting them relax.  

There are a couple of post-it's of Tonka toys pasted across that blue line. 

They had given me a big red ball to squeeze just in case I got claustrophobic and could no longer bear the sense of confinement.  I kept thinking, is this what it feels like when you're buried alive?

Well, I guess - except for that blue line.  They don't put that on the inside of the cover of the coffin because it won't matter to you if you're right side up or not.  And they know that.

But to get back to my story I was having an MRI.

I have a headache every day and it starts in my neck and goes all the way around my head unless I take enough drugs to make it all better.

One can confuse the lack of pain with being well.   I often do, especially when I take a really good painkiller.

At least one of my tumors (back when I had them) was chewing close enough to my spinal canal that my oncologist thinks I am potentially a candidate for a brain tumor.   And he would like to verify that my headache is not from that. 

But the pain is in my neck so he ordered a head and neck MRI.

Personally, I think my neck is being problematic, and the only other time it hurt like this it had a tumor deep in it's muscle wall.  Pressing out, and causing all kinds of mischief.  Crunching on my C2 vertebra.

But I could merely have a damaged neck that has hurt more in the last week than in the week before.

Be that as it may I was in for a ride in an MRI and to enjoy the ride I listened to the entertainment and I tried to catalog the sounds as I listened to them.  There were the loud high pitched buzzers that did not seem to predominate.  The sound of an unmuffled  diesel engine; maybe a tractor engine.  It would vibrate at a couple of different frequencies enough to make me think of all kinds of instruments that vibrate for various reasons.   Vibrators for example.

There was a mechanical woodpecker sound.

I would have to say that the tractor and diesel engines along with the occasional: "Whack!" were the dominant sounds.

Let's see - this is therapeutic right?

Put someone in a narrow tube, add loud noise and don't let them move for oh over an hour an a half.

I actually fell asleep in the middle of the noise.  Thus bearing witness to the peculiarities of the human psyche.

But it is over and now I can wait for the results.  But I think I will take a pain pill first.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

At this point I figure that I either have my little friend back in my neck or I have a chronic neck problem.

If my little friend is back he probably has little brothers and sisters.  In which case I'm in for another round of chemotherapy.  Yuck.

If I have a chronic neck problem then I am in the position of begging my doctor for drugs to control the pain; a rather unpleasant prospect.

The MRI will be Tuesday at 11:30 of my head and neck. 

And we shall see after that.  My neck is having some of those peculiar sensations that I had when I had a tumor growing under my neck.

It will be a relief to find out either way.   But which is worse, cancer or a chronic neck problem?

It's a headache. With uncomfortably familiar sensations in my neck.

Yes, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to recover from the pain so I can tell how bad it really is.  I feel as though I have been dulled to its full effect.  

I've been having memory lapses where I almost smell the saline they use to infuse me with anti-cancer drugs.  Pleasant, no?

You can probably guess that the pain I'm feeling has somehow reminded me of the hospital environment. I can't escape it.

I shall forever be plugged into a drip, drip, drip.  Thank goodness I still have my port.

As you can probably guess the headaches have gotten bad enough that I actually have to deal with them.  The degree of sloth I have is considerable, and my inertia something incredible to overcome.  Finally, today I overcame it and sent an email to my oncologist, copying his nurse navigator and my family doctor.

My head hurts.  I forgot to take an Advil.  Or maybe I didn't and it just feels bad.  I think I took the Advil.  I'll take another.

I found an alternative which will (I think) stop the pain.  It is rather serious pain medicine but I don't want to feel anymore pain tonight.

The back of my neck doesn't feel right; it feels like something is swelling up inside of it.

With the way that I feel I am wondering if a little tumor had been born in a comfortable place where it can cause me pain. 

The R-CHOP was very effective, how could the cancer come back?

Either my neck is plain messed up or I have an old familiar friend come to plague me.

We shall see next week.

My Neck is Causing Headaches

Over the past week or so my neck has started to hurt.  At first it seemed so insignificant I ignored it. But I have been taking Skelaxin to keep it quiet so I can get to sleep, and after waking up at 2:30 I was unable to get to sleep again so I got up this morning at 3:00 or 3:30.  

My neck muscles feel pulled.  And I have woken up with a headache the last couple of days.

It was a year ago that I was between the biopsy and a diagnosis and I remember my neck hurting not at all because I finally had good pain medicine. 

I sent a note to my oncologist's nurse navigator and I suspect I'll be going in to see my oncologist.  I just don't know when.

Wiped after 3 mo followup with oncologist

The parking lot is located quite some distance from the cancer hospital, and I felt tired by the time I was ushered into the little room where I would wait almost an hour to get poked for blood and see my oncologist.

This delay tells me that I am low on the priority list - meaning I am in relatively good shape and am not someone to really be concerned about.

After all, the cancer should be gone.

I was able to tolerate my stay at the cancer hospital pretty well, and I went home and since it was a vacation day, did anything but work.

What I was surprised at was how tired I was the next day and how weak my leg muscles felt.  My body was wiped from a simple visit to my oncologist.

Surprise - I still have a chemo hangover.