Yesterday afternoon, I had an appointment with Dr. Curtis Dickman, the Neurosurgeon that did my back surgery. This was a general follow up to the surgery to see how things were progressing.
The stitches I had were taken out from the chest tube and we had a discussion about the newer pain that I have been feeling in my upper back area. Originally, he thought it would be a good idea to do the vertebrowplasty similar to what I had done in the middle back area. He said that there could be possible collapse of the vertebrabral body and if this happens there is no forewarning and that the outcome is again paralysis! We re-looked at the CT scan from April 22, and then he seemed to change his mind and said that he didn’t think that the core of the vertebrae was as bad as he thought and that I should speak with my Oncologist to see what his thoughts were.
By the time I met with Dr. Kukinoor, my Oncologist today I was full of questions. My friend Lara and I had just left Dr. Lisa Stearns office, the lady who dealt with my pain management at Scottsdale Healthcare. The difference between her team and the group at St. Joes is that her team is able to administer and perform surgical options as well in addition to opiates to alleviate the pain.
My appointment with her was another follow up to my stay at SHC. Stearns mentioned the option of having a permanent pain pump inserted near my spine. The pros include: less medication (1 mg of medication vs 300mg, automatic pain relief, ability to change amount of drugs, option to do a “test run”, etc. The big pro that stood out to me was reducing the pain medication significantly. I was thinking, “sign me up! let’s do this!”. Then she brought me the literature and photos of the pain pump. HALT! This thing was HUGE! It literally looks like a Skool can or hockey puck and was heavy for it’s size. The pump is implanted in the abdominal area, just above or below the belt line. A thin, flexible tube, called a catheter, connects to the pump and is tunneled under the skin to the site where medication is to be delivered. The pump releases the medication at a set rate, and the medication flows from the pump, through the catheter to the site of delivery in the intrathecal space. After I saw the photos of people with the pain pump, my opinion changed. The pump was clearly visible, especially on those that didn’t have a large stomach.
Pain Pump
Pain Pump
I would imagine that it would even be visible if one were wearing somewhat of a tighter shirt. It looked extremely uncomfortable like it was stretching the skin. I think this would be something to consider down the road, but for now it seemed like a drastic measure.
Dr. Kukinoor fortunately agreed with me on the pain pump and thought that if the pain regiment that we are currently on is working, then let’s not change everything up again. I was also relieved to have the 3rd round of chemo and Zometa (bone density drug) scheduled already for May. We discussed the possibility of radiation to the upper middle back as well as the hip and femur area where the tumors appeared to be larger. He explained that the reason why we stopped the last round of radiation was because we had to move forward with getting chemo scheduled and completed. Now that we have, we could possibly relook at this depending on how much time the radiologist would need (# of consecutive days of radiation). I would need to schedule a follow up appointment with Dr. Brockman, the radiologist at St. Joes to find out what his thoughts were and next steps.
This morning felt very successful in getting many of my questions answered! My friend Lara, was nice enough to volunteer to be my caregiver/chauffeur for the day…it was nice to spend time even though we were just running errands and going from one appointment to the next. We did have a yummy lunch at Capital Grill today though after a very unsuccessful trip again to the sunglass shop. I started feeling nauseous for the first time today after the meeting with the Oncologist. It wasn’t as strong a feeling as the first go around of chemo, but I definitely felt something. I was able to take 1/2 pill of fenergen that I had from before and that seemed to help. By the time the late afternoon came around, I was exhausted and Lara and I came back to my house to watch movies. I started feeling like I was hit by a train again and realized it was probably because my 2pm meds were due and I hadn’t taken a dilaudid since that morning, 4 hours earlier! It’s good to know that I am able to space out the immediate release pain killers over a longer period of time (for now).