My damn left shin is a pain. Specifically it's a pain if I walk, or sit, or sleep. It seems I can't get any long-term relief. It's not an agonizing pain but it's annoying and for a while I thought it might be getting better. Wishful thinking perhaps, but I found I simply wasn't comfortable, unable to sleep soundly, or walk, or worst of all, just not knowing what it was.
Over a month ago I had a Bone Scan, which showed suspicious activity and signaled alarms that Paget's Disease or Metastasis was the cause. I was scared, and made an immediate follow-up appointment with the family doctor who had ordered the tests. While the Bone Scan screamed cancer, the X-ray said no evidence. I felt relieved and even happy for a while. Perhaps I had damaged my bone with some sort of physical trauma. But the pain wouldn't subside for any period of time. It wasn't horribly bad, it was just there. Annoying and unpredictable. However my work and life quality were suffering. I couldn't think or concentrate for prolonged periods. I brought this up with my Oncologist, who upon examining my shin said it was probably a metastasis, eating away at the bone. Great, now I'm a cancer chew-toy.
To confirm this I would have another CT scan. Within two days of my visit to the Oncologist, I was scheduled for a late-evening CT of my left leg. No preparation needed to be imbibed, no IV for contrast injections, just slide me into the CT and dose me with a whack of radiation. While my oncologist indicated that colon cancer patients presenting with bone metastasis were rare, it was not unheard of. Even so, as a precaution I would have a consult with a Radiation Oncologist. The consult would take place exactly one week after my recent CT of my left leg.
Thursday morning, June 11th and I'm at the Windsor Regional Cancer Centre. However since this is to visit a Radiation Oncologist, I'm meeting in a different venue than where I've gone for the past five years. While it's a new office with new people, some things don't change: like the boring, repetitious recitation of my medical history, my list of prescription meds and other minor trivia (like, what's bothering me now...) (Remind me to invent the app that lets patients and physicians update their medical databases per every visit. ) Administrative work completed, now I would meet the Doctor, and finally have the shin pain mystery solved.
I knew it was cancer. I've known since before the Bone Scan. Call it denial, but I like to think that I was now ready to hear the news. I didn't get upset, or insist on bone biopsies (ugh) or any further tests. I wanted to move forward to the next phase: Radiation Therapy. It was again stressed that this is strictly palliative. Some folks equate 'palliative' with 'imminent death'. I believe that it's going to help me feel better, and frankly that's all I want. My outlook on life is now looking towards the immediate future: This week. Tomorrow. Today. While the treatment itself is quite easy and quick, there were some preliminaries, and it would begin the very next day, with another CT scan.
This CT scan is a simulation, designed to set up the guide posts for the real treatment process. The way they do this is with precision scanning of the affected area and using alignment dots tattooed on your skin. In other words, I just got some rad, wicked, ink. Dude.
My treatments are expected to start within two weeks, so hopefully by the end of June. The treatment itself apparently takes only ten minutes, and is repeated for five days. So they'll start on a Monday and by Friday I'll be done. I'm told there will be some initial discomfort -basically I'm getting a daily dose of sunburn. For relief, apparently Hydrocortisone cream will be prescribed.. It can't be any worse than what I'm going through now. (Actually there's a suspicious spot on my right knee that will need further investigation.)
So I've had a seven-day stretch between CT scans and now all I can do is wait for my treatment. I'm sure it'll be a blast!
No comments:
Post a Comment