I’ve been naturally stressing for days over this. This one was at 6pm tonight. And I’m already home. Just goes to show ya, you show up early you get out early.

They got the catheter in 1st try again. I guess acting terrified makes the techs more conscious of what they’re doing. Although I’m not acting. The whole process terrifies me and I find it really hard to not run away and just avoid the whole thing.

All the other days I can almost fool myself into believing that I’m relatively healthy and dont have MBC. Lying on the bed with my arms stretched above my head, waiting for the machine to fire up and the voice telling me to “breath in, hold your breath”….”breath out” I realized what scares me the most is one of these CT scans is going to show progression. And it could be this one the way my hip is acting up again. I’ll find out next week.

Yup, the pain is back. I remember how it felt before and it feels like that now. The degree of it changes depending on what I am doing. My oncologist always asks me the level of it from 1 to 10 and in my mind I use the scale below to judge where I’m at at any given time. I’ve been living with it at a steady 3 with an increase to 4 for months but the other day it jumped to a 7. It’s back down to MY manageable 4 unless I need to get something physical done then it’ll jump back up to a 6 or a 7. The tricky part is being able to judge when the pain will stay at an increased state or will it just spike and decrease almost immediately.

Stuff that needs to get done like laundry and vacuuming are most likely going to be put off. Maybe the pain is still decreasing and if I do next to nothing for a day or two it’ll go away again. Until I learn to manage the degrees, I’ll be doing as little as possible.

Things I can do with minimal pain

• sit
• stand
• wash dishes
• walk slowly without carrying anything heavier than a can of pop 🙂

Things that cause pain and will most likely be put off until another day depending on their importance and the degree of pain I think I can deal with without having to reply on pain pills.

• walking while carrying something big and/or heavy like a laundry basket
• bending over or reaching up
  • to pick up something I dropped on the floor
  • getting dressed
  • getting to or from a sitting position
  • reaching for something on higher shelf
  • all things cat related (feeding, petting him if he isn’t beside me, litter box)

And I have to go easy on myself. My brain tells me I should be able to do it all but when I do, I hurt myself. I have to gently remind myself that I have terminal cancer that isn’t going to go away, not a broken bone that will heal in a week or two. It’s all such a mind f*ck.

I think I walked too much this week. They were fixing the sprinkler system in the underground parking so we had to move our vehicles out in the daytime for 2 days and of course there wasn’t any open street parking really close. My car was only a blockish away but it seems to be enough to have aggravated my lower spine. It started hurting in the afternoon and rather than resting which is what I would normally do, I had to go and get my car and pick up my groceries(curb-side pickup) and cart them in and put them away. The pain increased doing all this.

I went to bed in pain and naturally slept worse than I normally do. I had an internal conversation with myself this morning reasoning against taking a pain pill. All the standard stuff, it’s just a sore muscle, if I rest it’ll go away, I’m stronger than the pain… You get the idea. This went on for about an hour before I finally took a pain pill. I have METS in my lower spine and pelvis and from experience know that they’re hurting me again, it isn’t a messed up muscle.

I’d forgotten what this was like, this level of pain. I’ve been living with twinges and low grade, easy to deal with pain for a while and it’s been nice. I haven’t needed any pain pills. I’ve been able to manage the pain without them. Until today. I’m really hoping this goes away, that I just walked too much because walking too much has always aggravated the pain but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s back to stay and I’ll need to adjust to it. I don’t want to. I’m not ready to.