Partly Exciting, Mostly Boring

The big news is that I am posting this from the hospital.

On Monday morning we went to the movies with our son and his fiance - the new Sherlock Holmes movie, which we would give a mixed review, I'll alert you if son does a review on it - and when I got up from the chair after a rather uncomfortable two hours, I discovered that my left leg was considerably wider than my right leg.

We all went to lunch and played one of the extended versions of Pandemic, which was fun (we won, after a depressingly long run of losing the world's population - curse you, black plague!!).  When we got home, the leg was about twice the size it should be, so I called the on-call person at my oncologist's office.

Unfortunately, I got The Jerk (I've gotten him before - he refuses to give information or advice, which makes him pretty much useless).  As usual, he just asked me what I wanted to do, and told me I could try a dose of lasix if I thought it might help.  Yeah, thanks, that really was useful.

Anyway, I took the diuretic, and two hours later nothing had changed.  I called the pharmacist, who told me that the lasix should have hit peak usefulness at 1-1.5 hours after dosing.  I called the on-call line again, and this time got a doctor who actually cared.  She recommended a second dose, but told me to call back if the pain or swelling got worse, or if an area became inflamed.

I took a second dose and went to bed.  At 4am the pain became more localized to my inner thigh and groin, and was definitely worse.  I called the on-call gal again, and she told me to get to the ER, to tell them to give me an ultrasound, and then to have her paged with the results asap.

So off we went to the ER - St. Joseph's has a wonderful ER, so that's the hospital we went to, rather than the one attached to my Oncologist's office.

Turns out I have a giant blood clot, from my groin to my knee.  And of course, with my usual pattern of drug reactions, the drugs are not working as they should, and I'm getting unusual side effects.  Faux expressions of surprise, anyone?

So here I am, in the hospital, bored to tears and pretty much immobilized.  My big hope for the near future is that they will let me walk to the bathroom instead of having to use the commode - but my leg seems to be getting worse, pain-wise, so I'm not sure they'll let me wander across the entire room like that.

If anyone is interested, I'm at St. Joseph's Hospital in downtown St. Paul, and it looks like I will be here until at least Saturday (first they said Thursday, but my blood is not cooperating).

The clot evidently is being caused by the cancer.  This is evidently not unusual, but it is depressing, since it is a sign of the advanced state of my tumors.  Which brings me to the other news:

My scan results are back.  I have had a significant progression, with more active and larger existing tumors and several new ones added.  This is not surprising news, really, but it is depressing.  We're running out of treatment options, and remaining options are less likely to be effective than the ones we've tried (which means Pretty Much Useless) and more likely to have really unpleasant side effects.

So.  I'll report on my 'What Now?' conversation with Dr. Bouncy when I have it - I was supposed to be at his office today, but obviously that's not going to happen now.  I am hoping that either he will call me here, or that we can have that talk next week when I am done with my hospital stay; I'd like to make the decisions and start my next treatment asap, since the cancer has pretty much been growing unchecked for two months.

What's with the holiday season always coming with bad health news?  Diagnosis, progressions, they all seem to come at that time of year.  I'm not liking that pattern...

*Sigh...*