December 20, 2000|
Turn for the worst…
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Not at all. Instead, I am back in the hospital, in my same familiar room (1211A) with the same familiar nurses, with the same familiar pain. I wasn’t supposed to be in the hospital till next Thursday…I was supposed to be home for Christmas weekend…
It’s always the back
Last week, innocently, a little pain started growing in my lower left back. I didn’t think much of it. I hadn’t felt the pain in over a month. The chemo had shrunk the nodes that were causing the pain before. I had felt fine for such a long time. But then, as last week went on, I started taking more of my morphine to ease the pain. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much good. The pain was growing too intense.
Friday, I had a MRI done to check on this nagging back. The results came back inconclusive. No one knew what was going on. No one knew why the pain was there. Not the doctors, the neurologists, no one.
By Saturday, I could barely move out of bed and away from my heating pad. Something was the matter.
On Sunday at 9:30am, I went to wake up my roommate because of a phone call. As I gingerly walked down the hall, I felt something snap or break or crack in my lower left back. I screamed in pain and fell face first to the ground, catching myself only quick enough to roll over onto my back. My roommates heard my screams, called 911 and the next thing I know I was carted off in an ambulance to New York Presbyterian Hospital. After waiting for thee or four hours and not getting any pain relief, I was transferred to Sloan-Kettering, across the street. Still no pain relief, but at least at my familiar hospital.
Today
Still to this day, no one knows anything. The doctors can’t figure out why my back is in such pain. No one knows what cracked or caused my sudden fall.
We are still doing the twice-a-day radiation treatments, and hopefully they will help relieve the pain, but for now, I am still in just as much pain as when I came into the hospital. The doctors still don’t know the cause. I have another MRI with contrast dye scheduled for sometime this week. Maybe that’ll show something. I am not too optimistic.
Frustrated
This is where I get honest. I don’t have any inspirational words or lessons learned. I don’t have anything really positive to say.
I know what I should say and how I should feel, but I don’t feel that way. Simply put, I am screaming, “God, where are you!?! I know you are there, you have been there before for me, where are you now?! Help!”
I don’t have any answers to this and I wish I did. I wish I knew why I have to go through this pain period again. I wish I knew what was going to happen to my schedule for the stem cell transplant – even that is up in the air now. My Christmas spirit has been totally quashed.
I don’t see any light in the darkness of this all. There’s nothing to guide me, nothing to show me where to go, nothing to show me how to survive from one point of the struggle to the next. It’s just dark.