It’s amazing what a good night sleep will do! Sometimes you have to go through a night of NO sleep to be able to truly appreciate the nights you DO sleep well! J Wednesday night I had a pretty rough night. Ok…it wasn’t just rough…it was awful. Heartburn, back pain, throwing up…’twas not very pleasant. I have never experienced that kind of back pain before….the pain in my back was so severe that I couldn’t get comfortable…laying down, sitting up, standing…it just wouldn’t go away! I was able to sneak an hour or two of sleep in on the heating pad, but other than that it was a sleepless night of watching the clock in pain. Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock. I am convinced that time passes the SLOWEST when you are in pain or when you can’t sleep at night. It probably doesn’t help to be in pain when everyone else in the house is sleeping peacefully. (Just like in college when I was up studying late and everyone else was asleep….I just wanted to go to bed too! *smile*)
Anyways, morning rolled around and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I called the on-call doctor to see what I could do to manage my pain. She encouraged me to come in to the office to get looked at to rule out any heart or other issues. Only problem was that they couldn’t get me in until 11 am. Once I got in, they took blood work and poked and prodded and asked a bunch of questions. My heart sounded good, but they were not sure what was specifically causing all of my pain and they wanted to rule out a few things (pancreatitis, blood clots and problems with my gall bladder….on a side note, I was diagnosed with several small gall stones about a year ago and they said they would not do anything unless they caused me pain).
So…off to the CAT scan I went. (Apparently, I didn’t want any of the machines in the building to feel left out. I had already had an MRI, PET scan, Echocardiogram, Mammogram, and an Ultrasound…why not add a CAT scan to the list? J) 2 hours of prep before the CAT scan, included some special lemonade drinks and sitting under warm blankets until it was my turn.
The test went well and the doctor called me with the results. No problems with clots, pancreas or gall bladder…thank goodness! I was not ready to have to take another detour to have my gall bladder removed in the midst of this all. She said I had a severe case of reflux and possibly some inflammation in my esophagus. She added Prilosec to my list of meds and that did the trick! NO MORE BACK PAIN!! Hooray!! Another bonus to having the CAT scan….the radiologist confirmed that my lymph nodes were indeed shrinking from the chemo!! DOUBLE HOORAY!!
Thursday night I slept AMAZINGLY!! I can’t tell you how great it felt to be comfortable in my own bed…I think it’s easy to take that for granted, but I guarantee I will NOT be taking that for granted anytime soon. J
Next up….Friday and my second BIG round of chemo. Aaron was able to be with me and we decided to hit Eddington’s for some yummy soup and breadsticks before my treatment. Yum! My white blood counts were up and chemo went well! Now it is just a waiting game to see how the chemo will affect me this time around. Crossing my fingers that it isn’t too harsh.
The days surrounding my big chemo, I am put on steroids, so I actually feel pretty good with a little more energy than normal. I took advantage of that energy and played at open gym on Saturday morning and hit a few party gatherings on both Friday and Saturday nights. It was fun, but I am definitely feeling tired this morning and look forward to just relaxing at home the rest of the day.
Thanks for taking the time to follow along with me…
Love to all,
Nae
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