Side Effects

It’s been over 3 weeks since I last wrote on this blog.  At that last update I spoke how my oncologist was willing to increase my chemo treatment so that I could have a 2 week break rather than just one week.  Twenty-four hours after that treatment ended, I had a 72 hour migraine.  Although I have headaches every day (thank you very little brain tumors), and this wasn’t the most severe I had experienced, it was the longest lasting and just shy of the severity of the headaches that led to my diagnosis (those only lasted 15 seconds at most though). I called my doctor as I just didn’t think the extra time away from Spokane would be worth it if I was laid out for 4 days after.  She insisted I try it again, but this time we would do some preemptive pain management.  So last week, an hour before I would start chemo, I took one of my prescription, narcotic pain pills.  Since I can only take one every 12 hours, I staggered them with Alleve on the 4 hour mark.  Guess what, no headaches! Yay, kind of.  My new side effect was exhaustion like I have never experienced before, I slept at least 3 hours of the just shy of 4 hour drive home.  Got home and by 7PM was in bed (which is about 30 minutes after I got home) and slept a solid 12 hours.  The next day I went into work and almost fell asleep at the wheel both driving in and driving home.  When I got home safe and sound I took a 3 hour nap. Oh, and I mentioned my pain pills are narcotics.  So for anyone that has ever taken a narcotic (dilaudid in my case) or similar hard hitting drugs, who’ve been in a hospital where they provided you pain meds, or (so I’ve heard) due to pregnancy, you can get stopped up, constipated, unable to go #2.  Five days of sennecot, miralax, and combinations of both, I finally got relief.  So no headache, but other side effects.  However, these can be managed.  I feel that if I take the dilaudid just on day one, and start taking miralax prior to taking these pills I may be able to alleviate these unwanted side effects the next round. My hope is next treatment I will get to continue to head West and visit my brother, his wife and kids in Seattle.  Yes, you heard right, for the first time in 11 months I will be travelling someplace other than to a doctor’s appointment.  I am excited! So everyone cross your fingers and toes that I won’t be passed out for the weekend but can actually get out and do some sightseeing with the fam.

For now I am willing to keep this new regime. It will be nice to try to regain some normalcy in my life. To return to work and attempt 80 hour pay periods. To travel somewhere other than Spokane. To just be and relax without the nagging stress of trying to get up to Spokane every week.

My next appointment will also include another MRI. Yep, it’s been almost 8 weeks since my last one, so time to go in again. Once again we will see if now is the time for Gamma Knife.  My gut tells me yes, but my gut has been wrong a lot this year.

For all my friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, readers of this blog. Happy Thanksgiving.  I know that I have so much to be grateful for.  I can’t even begin to thank everyone that has given me such strength, hope, support and love during this very trying year.  As I flip another year over on my life, I am grateful I made it to 51 (something I didn’t think possible back in February), I’m grateful I am able to go out hunting (now just need the elk to get where I can shoot them),  and thankful for being able to respond after being told by a co-worker, how happy they were to see me, I was able to reply “it’s nice to be seen.”