Ups and Downs

We have all heard the metaphor that life is like a roller coaster. It has its ups and downs. But really, lately I feel like my life takes Run Away Mountain at Six Flags and kicks its butt (that is an amusement park here in Dallas for you non-Texas readers). I have been happy, I have been sad. I have been feeling good, I have been wallowing in pain. I have been optimistic, I have been beaten down. Keep in mind that these changes sometimes don't happen over weeks but happen in the same day. "What do you expect considering what you are going through?" I have been told many times. I don't know. I have never been through anything like this before.

A week and half ago I went to my daughter's soccer game at 9am on a beautiful Saturday morning. I started to feel some pain come on. I took some pain meds and did my best to grin and bear it. However, by lunch time I was lying flat on my back on the couch unable to really get up. I had extreme pain in both knees, both hips, both shoulders, and both elbows. Strangely, my back really wasn't bothering me. Where was this pain coming from? Earlier that week I had my monthly massage and left there feeling really good. Now here I am unable to get off the couch. Talk about roller coaster. I ended up spending that whole day, literally until I went to bed, lying flat on that couch. I loaded up on the pain meds and tried to ride it out. Fortunately, college football was on to keep me entertained.

Given my current health condition I am trying really hard to listen to my body. I am keeping a pain log so that I have a record of what hurts and when and what I may have done to cause it, and how I treated it. Just looking for any pattern or trends that may help in my battle. But I couldn't make any real sense of this latest pain outbreak. It had these characteristics, but not those. It felt like this, but a little different. The best I can figure at this point is that I had a small reaction to a cold. I ran a low fever at one confirmed point and probably had at another also if I had taken my temperature. Pain meds that help with fevers seemed to give me more relief than others. That all seemed to indicate the cold scenario. But it wasn't conclusive. And one thing I hate is loose ends.

Then my mind goes down that dark path. What if this is my body shutting down? What if this the cancer taking over and I am on the start of the end? When I first met with the doc down at MD Anderson he felt it necessary to give me the prognosis of somebody with stage 4 lung cancer as I have. The typical patient lasts about 7 months. Here I am at about 8 months from the initial diagnosis. (Everybody join in and sing "Happy you lasted longer than the typical cancer patient with stage 4 lung cancer to you" to the tune of "Happy Birthday") Granted, he also said I am not the typical cancer patient. The next date he threw out there was 2 years. Is that how much I can expect? The last number he threw out was that some live 5-7 years. Better, but still not good enough. If the end is now about 4-6 years away then I am still missing way too much of my life.

How do I get my body back on top of this again? Is it even possible? I have lost about 30 pounds from my peak weight during chemo. I know it is strange that I actually gained weight during chemo, but I did. My bones are showing when I look in the mirror. My mind seems to still be good. I still have a belief that I can get back to where I was pre-noma. Just hope I am not fooling myself.