When I started treatment, nearly every doc said that week three, maybe four, was things would start going pear shaped. The wheels of the car would wobble and fall off. Nice analogy saying basically, the hardcore pain was due. Honestly I felt lucky and figured it would happen more towards the 4th week side.
In the run-up for this I was getting two pieces of advice. The first was to start the pain medication now, let my body get used to them before the pain hit. This would make less medicine necessary, and generally have less pain altogether. The other school of though was more along my thinking. I’d be able to see the hardcore pain coming in plenty of time and fend it off. Up until that time I’d had random aches and pains pop up. But nothing Tylenol didn’t handle. And while my throat was dry. It wasn’t overly sore.
Until the first day of week three. Over the weekend, I came to the realization that unlike the last two weeks, things we going south so I tucked into the pain patches. Slapped one on Sunday and it appeared things were working. But they really weren’t. I was always a half day behind the pain curve. I had to ramp up much faster than I was expecting. And there were periods where my dose was too low or the patches were exhausted and useless.
It’s taken well into week 5 to get a handle on the timing to manage all this. But now if the dragon isn’t outright singing, it’s spending more time than not humming, which puts me at a tolerable set point.
I’m probably more unsettled about the Chemo’s cumulative effects than pain now. First few weeks it was nothing. Maybe a little dizziness by Wednesday, then it goes away. Week four it’s more like Saturday before I’m not groping for the anti-nausea pills.
I’ve been procrastinating about writing with all this activity. I’m actually headed into the last two weeks. And luckily no worse for wear than I was in week four.
Inspected By Pat 