May Contain Nuts

How did I forget the pain? Somehow, I had wiped it from my memory. All it took was one back twinge and everything came flooding back. Day 9 will now need to be marked in my diary with a big red mark. 

Friday was not the best of mornings. I had found out Thursday night that Hannah has now decided that deceit and untruthfulness are acceptable for her when she made out that Tom had gone home, when in fact he stayed over on the “night she wanted to spend with her family”. She gave no apology to any of us that live here, packed her bags for a weekend away with Tom’s family, and off she fucked. So, relationship with youngest child in tatters, I thought I would spend the day with Emily doing what she wanted to do. We had a nice lunch and Emily decided that she wanted to continue watching The Witcher series (with the Hemsworth Geralt) so that is what we did.

Simon went out in the evening with Tim to see Howard DJing, and Emily and I watched another Witcher. I thought I had been feeling a bit better, but a bit weird, for most of the day, and whilst lying on the sofa I could feel a strange heaviness in my hips and pelvis. I decided to go to bed, and Emily was happy to go up as well. Whilst in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I had to put another lot of hair that was falling out of head in the bin. Of course, the hair missed the bin and fell on the floor, so I had to bend down to pick it up … and that’s when it happened. The pulsing in my pelvis and spine made me feel like I was going to fall over. It was radiating low down, and I couldn’t catch my breath enough to stand up. After a short while, I was able to move my legs enough to get back up into a standing position again. This eased the pain, but the memories of the last round of chemo came flooding back. I thought that back pain was from drinking too much/not drinking enough. 

I settled myself into bed with some extra pillows to help me sit up comfortably and decided to search the internet. And there it was; back pain with filgrastim. The immunotherapy injections that I detest doing are the cause of the pain I am experiencing. I checked on the Cancer Research forum and the Macmillan Cancer Support forum, and there were posts saying that the pain is a sign of the immunotherapy working. The hips, breastbone and spine are the largest areas of bone marrow, which is where the white blood cells are produced. The immunotherapy makes the bone marrow produce more white blood cells and the pressure of this inside the bone makes them hurt. As per usual, with most forums, the people that were talking about the pain were the ones who had been hospitalised with it. Some of them were saying that even morphine hadn’t helped. Some had said that their doctors had advised paracetamol, whilst others said ibuprofen. The one thing that I couldn’t understand was I have taken these injections with the previous chemotherapy but hadn’t felt pain like this before. The only thing that is different is that I am not given antihistamines once a week. A couple of women had said their chemo units had told them to take a non-drowsy antihistamine. Of course, I would be having these pains on a Friday night, when the chemo unit is closed and won’t be open again until Monday. I refuse to call the emergency number. So, I lay in bed, trying to find the right position to lie in. I did it on the last round, I managed to cope with it enough to get through a few days of bone pain, so I was sure I could do it again.

Simon came home and was happily chatting away about his night out, but I couldn’t hold the tears in any longer. The throbbing and the pain and the ache became so bad that the only relief I could get was from crying. Simon kept telling me to take paracetamol, but I wasn’t sure if that would do anything. Plus, I have stayed away from any kind of pain relief throughout everything, and I didn’t want to start now. I had remembered the heat pack that was in the box of gifts I had been given on the day of my diagnosis and how it was there to help with the pains that come with the treatment. Simon filled up one of my hot water bottles and held it on the base of my spine and it helped so much. It didn’t take away the weird constant throbbing and the terrible ache, but it did lessen the pain. Sleep didn’t come very quickly and when it did it wasn’t for long. 

There were so many thoughts that were going through my head when I was struggling with the pain. The biggest one was “is it worth going through all of this with every round of chemotherapy?” That’s when I got scared. I’ve been given 24 weeks of chemotherapy, but this is triple negative cancer, and it is the most aggressive form of cancer. If it doesn’t respond to this treatment, what other harsher treatments will they then put me on? I could go through all this now, only for it to come back in a couple of years. Do I want my life to be full of pain and sickness? How much longer will I have left with my family and friends? 

I struggled through most of Saturday. I was either overthinking about everything when the pain had subsided or just lying down with the hot water bottle when the pain came back. There was an awful lot of me feeling sorry for myself, but I wasn’t going to feel guilty about putting me first and just taking the time to heal.

When I woke this morning, my night’s sleep had been so much better, and the throbbing is now just more of a manageable niggle. Simon took Emily and I out to lunch after she finished work, and I did a little bit of housework and cooked us all a nice roast dinner in the evening whilst Simon watched the England match, and Emily did some university work. The fears of me not surviving this are still there, but I don’t want to be remembered as giving up. I will keep taking the treatments and on the good days I will try and make happy memories with my family and friends.