And the Pain Goes On, the Pain Goes On (Cancer Update)

(What's the pop culture reference in the title that I co-opted?)

As I mentioned in my last update, this week was almost nothing but annoying medical appointments. After nearly 2 years of dealing with cancer, I'm over it. Can it all just go away? Even for a little bit? Nope, guess not.  And as I'm in too much pain right now to do any sort of sightseeing and traveling, it gives me something to do, I suppose. Here was my week:

On Wednesday, I headed to the hospital in order to have a thoracentesis performed. You may remember that I had fluid building up in the pleura around my lungs and this procedure drains the fluid. I arrived at the hospital at 7:00am and registered. I was told to head up to the Short Procedure Unit. Short Procedure - that sounded promising; perhaps I would be in and out in a short time. Nope! The nurse asked me to wait in the waiting room until they had a bed available. Around 7:45, the nurse (Lee) brought me back, where I had to change into one of those very sexy hospital gowns. After climbing into the bed, I went over my medical history with Lee. She then placed an IV in my hand and told me that they would be up in about 30 minutes to take me down to radiology. An hour later, I was finally carted off to the 1st floor. Both the nurse and the doctor gave me the overview of what the procedure would entail. Here's what happened: I was brought into the room, told to scoot to the side of the bed and lean over the x-ray machine bed. Then the doctor used an ultrasound machine to locate the pleural effusion. After marking the location on my back with a marker and sterilizing the area, he then stuck a rather painful needle into the area in order to numb it. Then a slightly larger needle was placed and the cap removed. The fluid flowed out into a liter glass bottle. I just had to lean and wait for the fluid to flow out. Approximately 10-15 minutes later, I was done and they bandaged the site. While I was waiting for them to roll me out into the hall, the nurse asked me if I wanted to see what had been removed. I said, "sure." I turned and saw 950 milliliters of bloody fluid. Holy crap! If you're like me and are a Metric idiot, 950 milliliters is 1 quart. A normal amount of fluid in the pleura is 20 milliliters. Well, no wonder I was having trouble breathing. Although oddly, it didn't do much to improve how I'm feeling. I'm coughing less, but otherwise, I still feel like hell. After a chest x-ray to make sure there was no pneumothorax (a collapsed lung), I headed back to the Short Procedure Unit and about an hour later (a little before noon), I was released and headed home.

The next day (yesterday), I headed back to the hospital for a CT scan. It was pretty much like every other CT scan I've had over the past 2 years. Arrive, sit, choke down a nasty barium contrast drink, lay on the CT machine, hold breath, get injected with a contrast solution, hold breath, and leave.

Today, I met with my oncologist to discuss everything. While he didn't give me specifics, he did say that the CT results showed that everything has gotten slightly worse since my last CT two months ago. Not surprising. He was disappointed that the draining of the fluid didn't do more, but he suspects that I'm just unlucky enough that even though the lung nodules are still relatively small, they're positioned in places that are causing me pain. Lately, I've been having stomach pains as well, and he suspects that's from the abdominal nodules. Oh joy of joys. He is still advocating chemotherapy and I am still adamant about not wanting to do any more chemo. So we have reached an impasse. The next step: the oncologist wants to be sure that it really is endometrial cancer that we're dealing with and not breast cancer so he is recommending a biopsy of one of the nodules. As there are now abdominal nodules that can be biopsied, the risk is minimal (as opposed to any lung nodule). Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I will have the biopsy to confirm that we are dealing with endometrial. This procedure seems stupid to me. What difference does it make if I'm dying from endometrial or breast cancer? Whatever. I left the office with a prescription for Percocet for pain and an appointment to see him in three weeks.