Pain Management

Yesterday was a special Meeting with the Professor. My son, Tunde, attended via FaceTime. It felt like he was sitting with me in the room taking notes, which he was 10,000 miles away in sunny Florida. It was fantastic. I love this new technology. Tunde and his family live in Southern Florida and we keep in touch via SMS, Skype, FaceTime and email. Skype allows me to read books and share music with my almost 4 year old grandson, Jalen. SMS and email are standard fare with both Tunde and his wife Zabrina. FaceTime is for when Tunde or Zabrina can only use their phones and we need to talk face-to-face. I've figured out that we see, hear or learn about each other more often than many families that live in this great city of Sydney. Like I said, this technology is magic and I love it.

It's especially important now that I am entering the last stage of this cancer business. Yesterday I found out the true prognosis and it's not too good. At least 2 years less than I presumed. However, it could be more if they find a medicine that works better than the ones we tried so far. So, who knows? I plan to be around for another 10 years out of sibling rivalry, to outdo my brother who died just 5 days shy of his 80th birthday just over a year ago. Just kidding, who knows what the future brings?

In the meantime, plans are going ahead for me to move back to the States sometimes in the middle of the year, to spend as much time with the family as I can. It's actually a planned move and has nothing to do with the current medical situation. I've always planned to move back by the time Jalen turned 5. He is just going to celebrate his 4th birthday in May.

I can't say that it's easy to chew on the latest prognosis, but I have incredible support, so I am doing quite well.  As far as I am concerned, the Caelyx seems to be working, because it has less side-effects than the previous pills.

The one big concern this past month was pain in my ribs. As I explained in my last post, it started about three weeks ago and it took some time to realise that I probably have a hairline fracture in there, because of the 'brittle bones' I acquired in 2007 after my first radiation treatment.

During the past week I tried all sorts of pain management techniques. I was given Endone to take home after my last hospital stay, but it has morphine in it and I don't want to get onto that just yet. So, I tried Panadine, which has 10mg of codeine. Well, it made me go to sleep. The next day I tried to take half a Panadine and a PanadineOsteo, which has no Codeine. That still made me woozy. The next day I tried a combination of 2 PanadolOsteo or just one during the day. It seemed better. Yesterday the Professor advised to take 2 PanadolOsteo every 4 hours. Lo and behold, miracles do happen. Today I'm almost completely pain free. Of course, it could just be effects of the steroid high after the chemo, but we shall see what happens when I'll crash from that either tomorrow or the day after. It usually happens then and I am pretty out of it with my sleeping pattern for a week. God willing the pain management will work and I'll be able to walk freely again. Well, I do hope so, because today I lost my walking stick and if I don't have pain, I don't need it. May it be so.