September

To  sum up the month, I'd pretty much just say pain.

So, we're still dealing with my pain in my sciatic nerve.  As I have mentioned before, my sternum is completely filled with cancer.  I did meet with a neurosurgeon and he believes that he can go in and scrape away some tumor from the spinal cord, enough to relieve the pressure.

However, he can't remove all of the tumor, because it is so big.  It has has replaced so much of my actual bone, that they can't take all of it or I will have too big of a hole and nothing to support that area. 

So, I was all set to have surgery last week, but of course, insurance caused issues to push it back in another week, which meant that I wouldn't have time enough to recover before Our Hawaii trip.  Did I mention we're going to Hawaii?  So there's this place called Aly's wish and we got put on the list a couple of years ago, soon after my diagnosis and we are getting a free trip to Hawaii from them.
They are sending my entire family. paying for flights, hotel and an actual luau. We'll be gone for a week. They're paying for five days but we're going to add in 2 more nights for a full week.

It's really awesome, but also really stressful because the girls have already missed so much school because of getting colds at the beginning of the year and then going to Florida for Dianne's daughter's wedding.  So now they're going to miss four more days of school and it's all in the same term.

But whatcha going to do? So, we're leaving October 14th and we'll be back, October 22nd. And I'm hoping to have a great time. 

So because of that, however, my surgery is postponed until October 29th. I'm just hoping I don't have too much pain in Hawaii to not be able to enjoy or be on so many drugs that I don't even remember very well.
So along with that, I am meeting with the neurosurgeon a few days before, and he's going to look at my upper back. I've got some tingling going on that's taking over my whole right. Arm shoulder blade and my port. And I'm also experiencing some weakness. So, the doctor was hoping that getting some Surgery up in that area could relieve it, cause he's worried about it becoming paralized......so we'll see.

To be honest, I'm scared to death of surgery on my back.  I'm scared of something going wrong, I'm scared of dying on the table, and scared of not recovering well,.  I'm scared of the pain. So I'm going to be getting some more pain to relieve some other pain.

And I hope it works.

In the meantime, I've just been dealing with pain and not doing much else. I'm on extremely high doses of opioid, in several different forms. I'm on fentanyl patches, which they say are more potent than cocaine. I'm on Percocet. Oxycodone really. And I'm on Gabapentin. And yet my pain is still there.

I have to take these drugs, every three and a half hours because I can't last the whole four hours. They make me fall asleep all the time. And I'm also really grateful for them because they dull the pain enough most of the time that I am able to get some things done.

I don't really feel like I'm living and I know my girls are concerned.  I've also been losing my hair again. Due to the Adryamicin, aka red devil chemo. And it's been coming out really hard and really fast.

I'm probably going to get a wig this time around. Kinlni has expressed how my lack of hair really bothers her.  So, I'm hoping that a wig might help her feel better, who knows? Maybe it will help me feel better too.