Sorry I haven't written much lately. The trial has had some side effects that I have been dealing with and they have made my sleeping habits change. Two main things have been going on... Pain and poo.
Every day since I started this trial I have had the POO. I spend hours in the bathroom. I have lost 20 pounds. I have found how to manage it so that I only have it at night, but that means I am up, seated on the porcelain throne till about 3am. And I went back to work on June 2nd, so when I am not working or spending quality time with the potty, I have been trying to sleep. I know... not very exciting, but it could be worse.
On June 28th will be my first set of scans since the trial began. I am excited and anxious to see if it has been worth it. I go every Monday to Chapel Hill for treatment. My blood counts have been great, except for my liver counts, which have been not so hot. At one point they reached 4.6 times what they should be. Bad enough that they were unsure whether to continue treatment, but the guidelines said that my numbers had to be 5 times the normal count for the treatment to stop, so I have continued. How this effected me is that my medication had to change. which brings me to the second thing that has kept me from being online... Pain.
I have been in pain for a couple of months. It started from a spot in my back. It felt like a huge lump. It was so large that the doctors thought it was cancer and were making plans to do radiation on it, but the CT scan revealed that it was not cancer, despite the huge size. It was a huge knot in my muscles. I went to a massage therapist who spent an entire hour just trying to work out the area. She succeeded in reducing the knot which was about the size of a tangerine down to something slightly smaller than a golf ball, but it is going to take a while to work it out.
The problem is that due to my mastectomy, I was trying to compensate for the sore muscles in my breast are by using the muscles in my back more. and I was using one side of my back more than they other, which led to a huge muscle spasm. To top it off, I am suffering from Post Mastectomy Pain Syndrome.
We started by treating it with the usual... Tylenol. That was not strong enough, so we added Tramadol. Then we switched to Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen. But that caused my liver to start acting up, so we had to move to ibuprofen and a different pain killer. All the while, I was fretting about taking habit forming drugs.
I have a huge fear of becoming addicted to drugs. I have a Xanax prescription that I don't use because... well... because working in the retail pharmacy business, I see a lot of addicts. I see people who have fits when they can't get their oxycodone, hydrocodone or alprazolam filled because they can't function without it (or rather, they need the drugs to sell). I never want to be one of those people. It took a lot to talk me into taking any pain meds, and I only gave in when Michele told me I cry and whimper in my sleep which keeps her awake. But the fear of addiction still hung over my head. Thank God for my Pharmacist however.
My RPH gave me four RPH Continuing Education articles on pain medications. One explained what the drugs do, how they work and the pain management ladder. One was about the difference between tolerance, dependence and addiction and the other two were about helping cancer patients through the correct ways to manage pain. Thanks to him, I now understand a great deal more about the medications and I am no longer afraid of becoming one of those people we retail pharmacy workers hate (addicts).
The stigma attached to taking pain medication is hard to overcome. I am lucky. My staff knows how I feel about medications, and have done everything to be supportive and try to make the move from OTC pain management into prescription pain meds something that I can handle without feeling like it is a personal failing on my part. I understand that from now on, this is just another part of cancer and it is one that I will become accustomed to.
Every day since I started this trial I have had the POO. I spend hours in the bathroom. I have lost 20 pounds. I have found how to manage it so that I only have it at night, but that means I am up, seated on the porcelain throne till about 3am. And I went back to work on June 2nd, so when I am not working or spending quality time with the potty, I have been trying to sleep. I know... not very exciting, but it could be worse.
On June 28th will be my first set of scans since the trial began. I am excited and anxious to see if it has been worth it. I go every Monday to Chapel Hill for treatment. My blood counts have been great, except for my liver counts, which have been not so hot. At one point they reached 4.6 times what they should be. Bad enough that they were unsure whether to continue treatment, but the guidelines said that my numbers had to be 5 times the normal count for the treatment to stop, so I have continued. How this effected me is that my medication had to change. which brings me to the second thing that has kept me from being online... Pain.
I have been in pain for a couple of months. It started from a spot in my back. It felt like a huge lump. It was so large that the doctors thought it was cancer and were making plans to do radiation on it, but the CT scan revealed that it was not cancer, despite the huge size. It was a huge knot in my muscles. I went to a massage therapist who spent an entire hour just trying to work out the area. She succeeded in reducing the knot which was about the size of a tangerine down to something slightly smaller than a golf ball, but it is going to take a while to work it out.
The problem is that due to my mastectomy, I was trying to compensate for the sore muscles in my breast are by using the muscles in my back more. and I was using one side of my back more than they other, which led to a huge muscle spasm. To top it off, I am suffering from Post Mastectomy Pain Syndrome.
We started by treating it with the usual... Tylenol. That was not strong enough, so we added Tramadol. Then we switched to Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen. But that caused my liver to start acting up, so we had to move to ibuprofen and a different pain killer. All the while, I was fretting about taking habit forming drugs.
I have a huge fear of becoming addicted to drugs. I have a Xanax prescription that I don't use because... well... because working in the retail pharmacy business, I see a lot of addicts. I see people who have fits when they can't get their oxycodone, hydrocodone or alprazolam filled because they can't function without it (or rather, they need the drugs to sell). I never want to be one of those people. It took a lot to talk me into taking any pain meds, and I only gave in when Michele told me I cry and whimper in my sleep which keeps her awake. But the fear of addiction still hung over my head. Thank God for my Pharmacist however.
My RPH gave me four RPH Continuing Education articles on pain medications. One explained what the drugs do, how they work and the pain management ladder. One was about the difference between tolerance, dependence and addiction and the other two were about helping cancer patients through the correct ways to manage pain. Thanks to him, I now understand a great deal more about the medications and I am no longer afraid of becoming one of those people we retail pharmacy workers hate (addicts).
The stigma attached to taking pain medication is hard to overcome. I am lucky. My staff knows how I feel about medications, and have done everything to be supportive and try to make the move from OTC pain management into prescription pain meds something that I can handle without feeling like it is a personal failing on my part. I understand that from now on, this is just another part of cancer and it is one that I will become accustomed to.
