Hi everyone,
I'm finally back. It's been a great summer. After three 21-day cycles, I took my last chemo pill a week ago. But I did hit a bump in the road Thursday afternoon and night when a pain in my lower right quadrant steadily increased to an excruciating level requiring a trip to the emergency room in Hershey.
We arrived at the ER about 9 pm and I was miserable. On the famous pain scale of 1 to 10, I told therm "12". The ER was packed and they put Barb and me in an ER psych room which offered some peace compared to the hallways filled with ER patients and all the commotion that goes with that. A CTscan was taken and indicated a 5 mm kidney stone lodged about half way down my right side ureter (the tube connecting the kidney to the bladder). I was very happy to hear that. We know what the problem is. It isn't spreading cancer. It isn't appendicitis. There is peace in knowing what ails you no matter how much it hurts.
While I was in a narrow bed in the ER and caught occasional naps, Barb was not so fortunate as the chairs in the room are too high, hard and had useless contours. After a short sleep on a makeshift bed using two chairs, she drove home around 4:30 am. I was given heavy artillery pain killer and checked into a hospital room at 5 am Friday morning.
A urologist stopped by and said uric acid stones are common among cancer patients taking chemo and is quite certain that is what I have. Apparently the kidneys can not keep up with the onslaught of uric acid resulting from the death of so many fast-dividing cells the chemo kills. So the acid crystalizes and turn into "stones".
The stone plugged the ureter which then distended or ballooned when the pee couldn't get through the roadblock on its way to the bladder. That ballooning ureter was my source of pain. So I can add this to my list of chemo side shows.
They said the best way to get rid of the stone is to place a stent in the ureter and catheter into the bladder for a two weeks to allow the inflammation to subside and "clean up" any infection with antibiotics. They said it is too big to pass. They plan to remove the stone in two weeks Aug. 30-31.
I was dismissed at about 1 pm on Saturday after a short tutorial on bagging urine. I was still very uncomfortable but now it was the sensation of having to urinate real badly. I was told that would subside.
When I woke up this morning I was in worse pain than Saturday night. I noticed there was no urine going into the bag so it was obvious there was a urinary retention problem. I called the urologist on call at Penn State Hershey and he said come to the ER to have the catheter irrigated. So at noon today Barb chauffeured me to the ER again as I had buckled over in pain with bladder spasms much like the waves of pain that occur during child birth labor. This wasn't on my wish list either.
A nurse irrigated the catheter and some fairly large blood clots came out. They were blocking the opening into the catheter in the bladder. Whew .... relief. They sent me home w/an irrigation kit in case this happens again.
There is good news in this story. My oncologist, Dr. Nelson Yee, looked at the CT scan and called Barb Friday evening to report that the tumor on the pancreas has not changed since the last CTscan in April. That's fantastic. It's still localized. Barb and I are so glad, happy, ecstatic, overjoyed, about this. I wish to keep it that way, or of course wouldn't complain if it got smaller.
My next oncology appointment is Sept. 7.
This post is way to long and technical but I don't feel like editing it. I'm sure many of you blog followers will find this boring/too much information/too technical/repugnant. I will try to be more philosophic and share some of my deepest innermost feelings in future posts.
My parting wisdom: Be glad for effective pain killers and wonderful anesthetic drugs.
Thanks for your tireless thoughts and prayers for Barb's and my well-being. I believe I am proof they make a real difference ... a "real" I really like and can joyously deal with.
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