Down and out

Been in a fog of pain for three days. It's my old foe: Pleurisy. Here's a description from the website called Healthline:

When you breathe, the tissues that line your lungs and chest wall, called the pleura, rub together. Normally this is not a problem, since the tissue is satiny and generates no friction. However, when this tissue is inflamed or infected, it becomes irritated and swollen. Its texture then becomes gritty, causing extreme pain. This condition is called pleurisy. 

Pleurisy has a grim fame of sorts, for it caused the death of a number of historical figures, including Catherine de Medici and Benjamin Franklin.

You know was idiopathic about having cancer? The thing is that each of us that has cancer, or any disease for that matter, is a unique individual, a set of 70 trillion atoms, a person, an entity, an organism. Unlike any other. A snowflake. We each come with our own unique set of circumstances, background, history, luggage and baggage, and shit. The stuff that makes us tick. We each tick tock at our own rate and with our own clocks.

So there are no hard and fast rules. 

For me, for some reason, when MY body or mind undergoes a lot of stress, its stupid annoying idiosyncratic counterintuitive non-brilliant DUMB reaction is to have pleurisy! It's ridiculous! What the hell!? How about just garden-variety over-eating of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream or something?

Wednesday I went around in pain, not able to take a deep breath, and with lasers shooting through me, worse  if I would sit down and much worse if I would lay down. Yesterday was the same, although I managed to get around during the day pretty normally. I hid it. Last night this act went to hell in a hand-basket at 1 o'clock in the morning and I was in out-of-control ouch-land and shaking and almost went to the emergency room but didn't want to leave my children alone at home. Hubby was biz tripping.

I hate having to drag around this stupid condition of pleurisy as a response to stress. Why? Because it doesn't make sense and it's a big chore to have to explain this to doctors who look at me and argue, "but this is not related to chemotherapy! This is not related to radiation! This is not related to heart surgery!" Or fill in the blank, whatever stressful thing I'm undergoing the time, "it's just not related!" I am a curious freak. I'm sure that I must be annoying in this way, and that they would like to simply bat me away. I would like to bat me away too, but my body says homie don't play that.

I know my freak pleural pain is not BECAUSE of radiation. I am not trying to argue that. I just want to know what should I do? Should I go see my general practitioner or show up at the emergency room or just scrounge around in my cupboard for old Vicodins and oxy pain meds from when my dad was around and take a bunch of them? That's what I did last night and it worked pretty well, but it's really not that great for carpooling and such. 

This morning from my general's test (bed) I put Fifi in charge of getting the kids ready, and they did, and they got a ride to school with a neighbor, thank God.

I slept till 9:30, threw on some slippers and drove to my 10 am radiation, luckily positioned a mile away. I was mostly clearheaded by that point but in a lot of pain, since the pain meds had worn off a few hours earlier. I looked particularly attractive too I'm so sure.

While there, a nurse, Allison, was kind enough to say hey why don't you stay here while I see if I can find a doctor to talk to you? She saved my day. Yes please. I met with a wonderful doctor at Austin Cancer Centers that I had never met before. He walked in and he was happy and jolly and kind of old-fashioned and retro. It turns out his old stomping ground is Tarrytown, and he used to hang out in Tarrytown Pharmacy were Mike was the manager for many years. He knows my husband, and my husband knows him and his wife. It's a small world. Cue the song. He hooked me up with some super strong pain medication and a short course of steroids, very very short, not enough to mess me up too much. I am now home resting, I have slept through a rock concert and four teenagers screaming and running around all day, but I feel much better. I waited to take the strong medicine until I had safely driven the kids home.

I'm riding this out.

You never know. You never know. You never know what's going to happen and who is going to help you. You just never know.

7 radiations down

13 to go