Doing the Crawl

I wish I could start this post with a happy tone. But...life goes on, and it's been difficult. I've learned to enjoy the happy moments with extra vigor because they've been so few and far between.

My son is still having difficulty recovering from his shotgun wounds. Our last hope is to get him what they call a "nerve block", which is an epidural, I believe. I'm keeping my fingers crossed because they're aren't too many options left. For some reason, the doctors have all elected to leave two of the hunks of shrapnel in there. We were to five doctors, including a general surgeon, and none of them would even consider the removal.

Another lovely surprise related to his shooting is that he's in school in Florida, where it happened. My ignorance was brought to light when we discovered that my health insurance, doesn't cover the injuries. So here come the bills for that. It did cover a small amount of the emergency room charges, but that was a drop in the bucket.

While we struggle to cover the flood of medical bills, for my oldest daughter, my son, and my own bills, I'm definitely crawling. The utilities bills don't go away, the cell phone, cable tv all became too expensive luxuries.My kids sacrifice so much and don't complain. The three of them are in school, hopefully learning how to build successful careers so they don't ever have to do the crawl. My income has become so minimal because my cancer cleaned us out, and now I'm disabled and on Social Security. Anyone who receives that kind of money knows how hard "fixed income" living is.

I've gotten some help from some kind friends who've donated to my fundraiser. It's like Christmas morning when I get notification of a donation received. It makes the load just a little lighter. I can crawl a little further. Payment arrangements with these companies is really only a temporary fix, it just means you'll have a balance that will take longer to pay off. It'd be awesome if the balance were eliminated altogether.

I'm gonna keep crawling until I learn to walk again. I'm hesitant to post these sort of pity parties, but I want to have something to look back on when I've made life good again.

I leave a link to my fundraiser on the sidebar, just in case someone wants to help out. I look forward to the day I remove that.

Like I said, you have to crawl before you walk. I'll get there.

62 Months - Day 44

I'm having good days and bad. Mostly good.

Wednesday I spent the evening with my daughter and her boyfriend. We ate a nice dinner and then took a walk on the beach with the dogs. My dog had never been on sand before, so it was a blast watching him go crazy, running, digging, even eating some. The other dog was basically looking at him as if to say, "What is wrong with you?"

The medicines are tough at first. They beat up your system a little bit, upset stomach, that sort of stuff. I was dehydrated the other day when I went in for my treatment so they loaded me up with a couple of bottles of saline IV. I was a little surprised because I've been very conscientious in my attempts to stay hydrated. I've been drinking Gatorade like it's my job. Well, I guess it could have been worse if I hadn't, right?

I've had some pain in my right leg. While there are 4 lesions in my right femur, the Doc thinks that there is some involvement in my back now too. He's sending me for an MRI on Monday to see if there are any lesions there. If so, he might have to go with radiation therapy as well as the medicines. Just a bump in the road.

I have got to work on making this blog a whole lot less boring! I'll get on that.

Another Starting Line

I'm probably the only one in town who was glad to get a cancer diagnosis. For the last 5 months or so, things really started to go wrong with my body. Things were hurting where they once were fine. I was losing weight like crazy, which was really odd, because I'd begun eating as though it were my job. But mostly I was sleeping way too much. And I like to sleep, believe me.

So many times, things go undiagnosed for people. Things go wrong, and no one can tell them why. I've always felt like that was the worst thing. Something hurts, and no one can fix it.

But I got a solid diagnosis. And for me, that's a good thing. I feel like I was getting my ass kicked in an alley, but now someone has taken my blindfold off and I can see who I'm fighting. The odds just got a whole lot better.

On August 9th, 2012, I'm going to get my first round of two drugs, Zometa and Velcade. Friday I should be getting a delivery of another medicine called Revlimid. That one's heavily regulated and controlled. I can only get that one shipped directly from the manufacturer. I've been doing a little reading from the literature the doc gave me on these drugs, and I might be a little sick for now. But what the hell, anything worth having is worth fighting for, right?

Onward and upward. Or some other cliché!