Real Life Happens Too

The stress, anxiety, fear and weight of living with metastatic breast cancer is a constant in my life. It wakes with me each morning, it is the thought I fight off each night as I fall asleep. My life certainly doesn’t revolve around it, but it is certainly a constant. 

It also becomes my default for all problems medical. So a few months ago, when I started having persistent abdominal pain, and my tumor marker showed the likelihood of more cancer, I put it all together and wrote off the increasing pain to the increasing cancer. Mind you, I connected all those dots without the help of my doctor. 

Last Friday, I finally had the CT scan that confirmed more cancer. *SIGH* Eventualy that will mean a new therapy – one more off the list of potential life-extending options. 

But first, a detour….

The CT contrast usually leaves me pretty sick, so I wasn’t shocked when I felt horrible on Friday evening and Saturday morning. Over the course of the day Saturday the pain got pretty bad, definitely in new territory. Except with the months of escalating pain, I wrote it off as more of the same. When my friend Andrea came over to be with me, she pushed me to consider the emergency room, but I was adamant that my fever wasn’t yet high enough to call the doctor. 

Sunday brought more of the same, and AnneMarie and Andrea teamed up against me. I called the on-call oncologist and was directed to the ER. 

By 1:00 AM I was in surgery for a burst appendix, which in retrospect was probably the reason for the pain and all the stomach upset. 

My recovery has been complicated by my being on blood thinners, a drain that didn’t work right and what we think is another abscess around my appendix – or where is once was and might still be. (I guess it’s hard to say.)

As of now, I’m waiting on the CT results from the third scan in six days. I’ve given in to the need for morphine and so hopefully this post makes sense. I will probably, hopefully, have something to drain that will relieve my pain. One of life’s reminders that MBC doesn’t protect us from life’s other garbage…

Advertisement