D+7 — I Knew It Could Be Worse

My typical night is not a good night of sleep. In addition to the external interruptions of vitals checks and medication changes and blood draws — sometimes from a line and sometimes from a needle in the arm — I also get up every hour to pee.

Last night, shortly after getting into bed, I got a back spasm at my tailbone. I have had back spasms before, but usually with an obvious cause like a sneeze or a poorly executed lift of something heavy. This one was just out of nowhere. And it was bad.

It took a while for a nurse to come in and talk to me. She wanted me to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 10. I always have trouble with this question. After all, no matter how much something hurts, it could hurt more. Can you ever reach 10? In this case, I decided that writhing and moaning was equal to 8, which was high enough for my nurse to make an inquiry. Of course, that takes time, during which I'm still writhing and moaning on the bed. The first drug they tried didn't help, and then they switched to morphine. Not very much morphine, but it did the trick. So, two hours after the start of spasm, I started my typical sleep in 60-minute pieces.

But that's not all! The mucositis has gotten worse over the course of today. No mouth sores or diarrhea, but the pain of swallowing has reached the point of me not being willing to eat. Since this afternoon, we have been trying to find the level of pain medication (currently morphine) that will allow me to swallow. So far, we haven't found the dosage, but I'm sure we will.

So, not a very good day. But I am one day closer to being through this uncomfortable phase. In a couple of days, we should see the start of countable white blood cells. Almost there.