Pain wise I am doing "ok" its probably in the 3-4 range with an occasional 5 if I move funny or extend my arm a bit more than I should. It does still feel odd to swallow or yawn or laugh etc because I can feel the little cathedar right next to my throat but the doctor assures me you get used to it and can't feel it after a while. I am also having some lingering 1-2 pain with spikes into 4ish from my I/O after I over stressed it a couple of nights ago. Basically I tried to roll over in my sleep and my leg has to push through the covers to turn me over which pulled hard on that region. I woke up in pain probably close to a 7 quite honestly but it only lasted a minute or two and went down. That being said I am taking a bit of pain medication, and my Ativan today. I have to say Ativan is really what's making it possible to cope with all this, I had to go totally off of it for 18 ours or so before the surgery and I was shaking and very stressed. Anyway all is fine now, this is all alot to deal with especially for someone like me who is a "worrier" so its nice to have something to help calm me down. I would describe it as a MUCH less potent version of Ritalin. Ritalin was night and day for me, taking a pill of that made everything clear and my mind was 100% focused... Ativan is more of a happy feeling and instead of making you clear it just makes the bad stuff less important so you don't care as much about it.
I got a special card I have to carry with me now that describes it for medical people.
Always said I wanted to be a Cyborg, guess this is a step towards that ;-) Oh for all of those people thinking of getting a port let me say this on placement. They will put it on either side BUT, right is easier and less wires running under your skin and the left side one interferes with your seatbelt that's why I went with it on the right. Have to retrain myself to not carry my computer on my right shoulder.
As for the port its doing well, minor swelling I have used an ice pack twice when it felt a bit puff or "warm" to the touch. My temp did go up slightly by a degree or a degree and a half for a couple of hours last night but it went right back down. We were monitoring it closely and had the phone ready to call the hospital. I did take a shower with it covering it in saran wrap which was a pain but I needed the shower. Here is a current pic of what it looks like today
As for getting ready for Chemo, my wife and I are getting the house ready and getting together a list of all the things I need and having them out and ready for me. We are also making a nice grab bag of goodies for when i go in for treatment. Her boss loaned us his Xoom (Which he purchased and never uses I guess), I unlocked it, rooted it, and now I have netflix/hulu/hbo go, and lots of games etc. I even put a full desktop install of ubuntu on it in case I wanna play around with that.
Some good news (unrelated to cancer etc) we got approved for our new house down in the Bay Pointe area in clear lake. Still leasing, I think owning is just silly unless you wanna stay somewhere more than 5 years and jenn and I like to bounce around and try new places and new things.
Hi mike... jenn just shared your blog with all at the office and we are all inspired sir. You even just sent off a quick brainstorm session (more to come soon on that).
ReplyDeleteSo glad you are making use of the xoom as I got for the office to use on conferences/trips which we did a few times but sat dormant most of the time. Looks like you are going to have way more fun with it.
Also, Jenn just told us about the house too. That is awesome news and congrats or in arabic... mabrook!
Look forward to following along as you "Take Cancer Down, 1 Ball at a Time".