And the Fight Begins

At first, immediately following chemotherapy, we thought she may make it through pretty easy. On Saturday, she felt good. We made a really quick run to Publix. On Sunday, she felt ok, we had brunch at Too Jays and then shopped at a crafts store.

Monday, she went in for a shot. It's a shot to force her body to make white blood cells again. On Tuesday, she felt ok but by Tuesday evening pain was setting in. Bone pain. They warned her of this.

Yesterday, the pain intensified and she was fearful of what was to come. She had been told she may feel as though an elephant was sitting on her chest and not to be concerned about heart attack if that were the case. She took her pain meds regularly around the clock and she fought off nausea.

This morning, she woke up and the pain was so bad she was in tears. Her body hurts right now. Most of the day we tried to stay ahead of the pain, alternating ibuprofen with hydrocodone. However, the evil beast stalked her and would creep in when the hydrocodone started to wear off. A little after 5pm her pain level was a 10. It came on suddenly and we were an hour away from time for her to take hydrocodone. My mom has a high pain threshold. She is a trooper. But this pain had her in tears. I gave her the pain pill early and I called MD Anderson. It was after hours at that point and I got the answering service. The on-call doctor called us back promptly. When I say promptly, we literally received a phone call back within 5 minutes!! He isn't a doctor we knew but he was so kind, so warm and so helpful! I explained the alternating of the meds, the dose of hydrocodone she's currently on and asked him if we can increase it by either doubling at a single time or shortening the time between doses. He said she could do either! Which ever worked best! Oh thank goodness. . .relief!

So, we have increased her doses of the hydrocodone to once every four hours and increased her ibuprofen to 600mg every six hours. Heat helps, so I ran out and purchased an electric blanket (which gets some interesting comments when purchasing it in September in Florida). I also found this moist heat neck wrap heating pad that looked like it would really feel good. She is having pain up her spine into her neck, so it seemed like something that might give her some comfort.

We sat down tonight and went through all of her meds, placed doses and times in pill bags and prepared for the next few days of fighting through this pain. I think today had to be the worst and tomorrow will be better. It WILL be better.