Drugs, Drugs, and More Drugs

They sure are more liberal with the pain meds when you’ve got cancer! Today I got a prescription for honest-to-god MORPHINE for my abdominal pain. The Percocet I was taking was keeping me awake at night, so we’re trying this instead. Weird, I know. Apparently I’m especially sensitive to narcotics — with the Percocet, I doze and have one after another of weird mini-”dreams” which wake me from my dozing — which wasn’t really sound asleep to begin with. Maybe morphine will work better. We shall see. When I’m having pain, I’ll be taking 1 time-release tablet every 12 hours.

Other health news: The one liver enzyme that was very very elevated has gone down a bit on my latest bloodwork. Yay! Maybe the FOLFIRI is having an effect on the liver tumor. My CEA tumor marker went up yet again but by a much smaller percentage than in past tests, so… not great, but not too bad. It might be due somewhat to all the inflammation in my gut from the chemo.

So, the plan now is that I will continue on FOLFIRI without the Avastin on the presumption that I will be having surgery again in late January or early February. Also good news is that my local oncologist is onboard with the idea of me having surgery again and agrees with me that I should be a good candidate for it still. If for some reason my previous surgeon doesn’t want to go back for another try, my local doc has connections at NIH with people who will do the surgery with the HIPEC. (Though I’d rather stick with my original surgeon since he has very much experience with what is a very complicated and delicate procedure.) We shall see.

Also, I’m now lined up for my next CT scan — which will be in mid January. Much will be revealed at that time. Until then, it’s all a matter of just keeping on keeping on.

For those of you who aren’t part of my musical life, I’m no longer doing any performing. I’m just too fatigued to make a decent go of it and it’s not fair to the groups I play in to be unreliable as I have been. (I’ve had…ahem…episodes of sudden bouts of diarrhea with accompanying cramping and general abdominal owie-ness. Not the best circumstances for performance.) So… I’m home most of the time now. Stop by for a visit if you’re in the area!