No Pain, No Gain

No pain, no gain. That's a phrase that we probably have all heard. Posted on walls in high school weight rooms across the country, it encourages us to push ourselves one step further, to do one more rep. However, in my situation pain was a red flair signaling something drastically wrong. It screamed that something was not right in my body. At first I tried to cope with pain. I was doing exercises to address what I thought was the source of pain. I took medicine to minimize the pain and help me get through the day. But the pain grew and spread and this pain would not be denied. It started in the shoulder, then dropped down into my lower back, and eventually spread to my entire pelvic region and knees.

The other day I flashed back to when I was sitting a room at Baylor in Plano waiting for my first biopsy. Anna was with me and I was dressed in the stupid hospital gown lying in a bed waiting for my turn. But the thing that came back to me the most was the pain. I was lying there in intense pain. On the wall beside the bed was a picture of 10 simple faces with different expressions. They were expressions ranging from happy to very upset based on your level of discomfort due to pain. Now I have no idea how my pain threshold stacks up in comparison to others, but on that particular day I was a good solid 8, with 10 being the worst. In fact, because the surgery was running behind, I had to have the nurse administer some serious pain medication just so that I could tolerate being in that bed. The cancer that had invaded my body must be doing some serious damage to inflict the pain I was feeling.

After a couple of visits with the oncologist and a little bit of tinkering around, we finally settled on a regiment of medications that masked the pain and, as Anna likes to say, let "Happy Josh" emerge (not drug-happy, just back to normal). She could tell without a doubt when my pain medications were wearing off and that pain cloud swept in to change my disposition. I was taking a combination of morphine and other pills to make my life normal. But I knew that these meds were just blocking the pain signals from reaching my brain. Inside my body the battle was still raging. The cancer was still there causing damage and pain even if I couldn't feel it.

I have had two rounds of chemo to date. At the last doc appointment it was discussed that the course of treatment the doc had prescribed was the maximum dose of the two poisons they inject into my veins every three weeks. Then he threw in another drug called Zometa for good measure. I also continued to take my pain meds. Twice a day I would swallow my regiment of little pills. (By the way, trying to swallow a bunch of pills when you are nauseous and sick from chemo is not fun.)

Two rounds of chemo: is it working?

I have a way to test it. Back off the pain meds. Open up that information highway in my body and see if the pain signals are still as bad as rush hour on Monday morning. Theoretically, if the cancer is winning the battle against the chemo, then surely the pain level will return to at least what it had been before I started treatment. Although there are a lot of variables going on, it seems like a viable test. So I started by cutting the dose of morphine in half for the morning regiment. Then cut the morphine in half for the evening regiment also. I then bumped the naproxen down from the prescription strength 500mg to the OTC dose of 220mg for the morning round. Then down to 220mg for the evening also. Two days ago I cut out the morphine all together. Yesterday I took one 220mg of naproxen and that was it.

The result? My pain level is a 1, maybe it creeps up to a 2 every once in a while. I am sleeping in positions that weren't tolerable for over 6 months. I am sitting at the computer for extended periods of time without any discomfort. No pain, GREAT GAIN? Don't know. Like I said, I don't know the scientific merit of this little experiment, but at face value it sure sounds good.

Is the chemo destroying the cancer that has permeated my insides? I sure hope so.