Chondrosarcoma – ah shit, bob's sick

Today, treatments went well again, proton is without a doubt, hundreds of times nicer to deal with then IMRT. After spending the weekend without any treatments (as always), and then the last few days with only proton, I can truly say, that I feel better now, then at any time since I’ve started treatments in Boston.

As a quick explanation of the differences in IMRT and proton treatments, it kind of goes like this: With IMRT, they set you up, run the machine and a 2 or 3 hours later you get sick with nausea and all the other stuff. It also takes two or three days to get it out of your system. On top of this, you have whatever pain you when you walked in the door … so basically, you’re never feeling good.

With the Proton treatments, 5 -10 minutes after treatment, I get some swelling and pain in the tumor for an hour or two (take a pain killer), but then, it’s completely gone. This is making all the difference in the world in my ability to work and function on a decent level. I’m really excited, hopefully it’ll stay like this.

If it weren’t for the pain in my hip, that is caused by a large piece of cartilage, that the tumor has grown, I’d have to say that I’m feeling close to 100% normal. What a relief, I was thinking that I may have to spend the rest of life feeling like I did this past week.

Proton, at least for the moment, is definitely doing the trick. This I can live with, literally.

I wish I would’ve started off with these treatments instead of the others, but I have to assume they were necessary to have. At this point it’s been six days since I’ve had no IMRT and I’m starting to feel good again!

So, I really have to hand it to Doc, he was correct in saying that proton would be a lot easier and gentler. He was right.

When I woke up this morning, and my head was clear, and I didn’t feel sickened or nausea-ated, I thought the dissipation of radiation, is what was going on.

Now, if things can stay like this for the rest of the treatment schedule, I have a chance at completing some of the tasks I set out to do while being in Boston.

Self Examine: Part One

It’s Monday again and another week of treatments has gone by.  This week and at least five more to go, and hopefully, all this will start to calm down and some resemblance of what life was, will start to return. That’s a good thing, because I’m getting mighty  bored with traveling back and forth, and never really being able to settle into anything.before it’s time to go back and start over.  I wish I could say that everything was going well, but to be honest, it seems to get more and more difficult each week.

Difficult, may not exactly be the right word to use here, but for now, let me see if I can understand, explain, re-live, recall,  the thoughts and events that brought me, to where my head is at, at the moment. It’s a strange place and not a typical (at least I don’t think it is), set of my normal thought processes that I’m using lately.  Not to drift from the subject, but as a side observation that I’ve made, … cancer, not only effect your physical health, but your mental well being too. Surprised! … right?, I don’t think so, of course it does, how couldn’t it?

Now, I don’t believe I’m mentally unstable, or unstablizing (ok, those that know me well, we can make a joke here, and declare “well how mentally stable was he to begin with?”, but I’m talking standard fare, for me), but I am believing, I’m showing, signs of stress, depression and possibly fear, as in “fear of  knowing what the future holds”.  Stress, Depression, Fear … those are the words I want to think about.

 Now should I say right here, before this goes any further, that I’ve taken One(1) Vicoden (early in the day), One(1) 30 MG of morphine, and a few tokes of medical marijuana, a typical evening’s  snack for me since they did the biopsy. The “pot” helps the morphine work better, and it also helps with the nausea that often accompanies morphine.  Morphine in itself, will make you sick if you’re not careful if. I don’t get “high” from it, it simply brings me back into a functioning state.

 The current pain in my hip or tumor is constant, twenty-four seven, never letting up for even one moment. Without relief, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything but the pain, the morphine subside that pain, and therefore allows me to function normally or at least, close to it.

 Now when I say pain, the closest thing I can think of, that all of us have experienced at one time or another, is a toothache, a pretty bad one, maybe not the absolutely worst one you’ve ever had, but a throbbing toothache that just won’t let up. That’s about the degree of pain that’s in my hip at all times.

 There is no high from the morphine, just relief. The “pot”, relaxes the rest of my body, and allows the morphine to do it’s job more effectively and efficiently, while using a lower dosage.

 So, with this being said and understood, when I say that this past week was difficult one, and mainly because of the effects that the IMRT treatments were having on me. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were tough days, the increase in treatment levels brought on nausea in a way that’ll ever felt before. I was as sick as I’ve ever been. Remember, this is on top of the hip pain. A double whammy you might say.

 Now you’ve got a damn good toothache, and you’ve eaten some bad food too! So along with the toothache, you have nausea, diarrhea, and cramps. Ever feel like “you just want to die” … get the picture?  Not a pretty thing. However, you do get through these periods, and when they’re gone, the constant pain in your hip, may be back, but you almost welcome it as a simpler version of what could be.

 OK, we were talking about stress, feeling like this, never good, but sometimes worse, causes stress to build, slowly over a period of time, in your body and mind. Recognizing it, isn’t always easy to do, and before you know it, stress is overwhelming and running your mind. I can feel myself, with ever increasing stress levels,  building slowly.

 Traveling is stressful, treatments are stressful, constant pains are stressful, schedules, visitors, food, bills, money … yikes! See what I mean? Yes, I do have a level of stress in me and I’d have to be crazy not to.

 So yeah, if someone asked me if I were stressed from having to deal with this cancer, and all the stuff that goes along with it, honestly, I’d have to answer “yes”. Am I stressed, not to the degree of jumping off a bridge or anything like that? … no, but I am under stress, and I understand that. Not that I can control it any better, but I understand, that I am. Do you?

 Depression, that was another one of those terms or words that I wanted to try and measure the level of, in myself. Well, … where do we start this ? I guess for one, we’ve already determined, that I have some degree of stress, so that’s depressing in it’s self, right?

 Now there’s other stuff going on here too, there’s a lot to understand about depression and I’m not sure I’m qualified to even talk about this … but then again, what the hell, it’s only me I’m talking about right? … well, unless you think other cancer patients may experience bouts of occasional depression. Do you think so?

 To be continued tomorrow-ish … btw, treatments went well today  J