March 2009

Yeah! I finally spoke to the pain med guy, Jeff who I have worked with in the past. It looks like we are finally going to try to switch things up to get the pain under control. We are starting asap by increasing my Fentanyl patch, Neurontin, and incorporate some sort of sleep aid. I will still have my trusty Dilaudid as a back up for break through pain, but the Oxycontin will be eliminated.

This is the first .. Read More

Following are the caregiver thoughts from my best friend Christine and her observations of the week

Overall Thoughts for Thursday, March 24, 2009: Despite the anxiety from the big surgery tomorrow, Melissa was in good spirits. I’m glad she was able to get some fresh air and sun today. She mentioned that this is the best she has felt in several weeks. It’s too bad that she is feeling so good today and she’ll be feeling horrible after surgery .. Read More

No Sleep! That’s right….I think I got about 4 hours of sleep last night! Went to bed around 11pm, back up at 2:30am and then back to sleep for an hour or so at 7:30am. So what does someone do for 5 hours in the middle of the night? Hmmm, online window shop, visit too many cancer message boards, research medical information that makes no sense and stare blankly at the screen wondering when the pain .. Read More

Yeah! Made it through another couple of days without any complications. The x-rays came back and everything looks good so far. I was moved from ICU tonight down to the regular oncology unit. Yesterday I had my catheter taken out and then today finally my chest tube and the IV that was stuck in my neck. Both were extremely comfortable and huge, so what a relief to be free of the cords and have mobility! I .. Read More

Yeah! The surgery was successful…whatever that means. I guess there were no complications, and I didn’t even need a blood transfusion. The surgery started yesterday at about 1pm. I remember falling asleep to 12 doctors bouncing around the room prepping for surgery. It’s crazy to believe that they were all there for me!

I woke to the most horrific pain., something I wouldn’t ever wish for anyone to experience. I wasn’t sure where I was, but I think at that .. Read More

Surgery is moved to tomorrow! I was taken down to the pre-opp waiting area around 12noon with my family to wait for surgery today. From 12-2pm we kept receiving messages from the nurses that the doctor was behind and had some emergency things that had to be taken care of so my surgery would be running a little late. At this point, we were all getting very anxious, especially after waiting all last night, this morning fasting, and now .. Read More

Today started off with a minor surgery to get ready for the big spinal surgery tomorrow. I was taken down to the operating room to get my “umbrella” injected into my leg vein so that in case any blood clots try to mosey up to my lungs during the surgery/recovery then it will be stopped before I have a pumonary embellesim. The surgery was easy, lasted about an hour and I woke to this horrible itchy feeling on .. Read More

Today was decision day. We finally have some answers on the spinal surgery! This morning we met the famous thoracik surgeon, Dr. Dickman from Barrows Neurological Institute that would be performing the surgery. He at first was ambivalent on if we should move ahead with with the surgery. His thinking was that if I had only 6-12 months to live, then it didn’t really serve a great purpose to do the surgery when a good couple .. Read More

Sunday…more waiting. Saturday night I had a horrible night’s sleep. Since I was hooked up to a million machines like some kind of battery charged robot, I woke up every hour from 1:30am-4:30am. Each time, I would sprint to the bathroom and have to try to jump through and unwind the tangled mess of plug ins and wires from the machines hooked up. I now had 1 compression wrap on each leg, pain pump that .. Read More

Today is Saturday and I still have no answers regarding the spinal cord compression. My friend Erika spent the night last night to keep me company and we were both woken early this am by a new doctor! He started talking and I groggily interrupted and asked who he was. He explained that he was a neurologist, Dr. Gonzalas…and I think that’s pretty much the jest of what I understood. He went on to say that he .. Read More