Pain Management

I have gotten to the point where I am in need of pain management options.

I need something to alleviate the pain and get me thru it when it flares up and the flare ups are becoming more and more frequent.

I don't want to just pop a pill to kill the pain, I don't want to depend on drugs to feel better.

I am looking into anything and everything that will help me deal with it. (because it certainly doesn't seem to be going away)- nearly every day I feel something, the severity is what varies from hour to hour.

Today I am a 2-3.5 with moderate back, shoulder and knee pain. Tomorrow I could jump to a 5-6 with the same parts of me acting up. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the flare ups...my body just hurts all the time now.

I can feel it slowing me down and tiring me out. Pain takes a lot out of you.

Mostly my pain feels like bone, hip and joints, shoulders etc. All the moving parts. My Oncology nurses warned me arthritis would come in sooner than I may have been destined for...a few posts back I mentioned the article in CURE about bone loss.

This is becoming a very real long term permanent side effect of my ABVD chemo.

I am not surprised by the noise my body makes and I struggle with everyday movements sometimes. It comes and goes like I said...today wasn't bad, tomorrow is another story...

I am looking into: http://www.pain.com/

http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/default.htm

http://www.mdanderson.org/topics/paincontrol/

http://www.aapainmanage.org/

I have also noticed that when I feel like crap...(aka: in pain) I am very short tempered and my family is getting the brunt of that and that is also why I am looking to ways to deal with pain. It is not the least bit fair to take it out on them.

I am also looking into Tai Chi: http://nccam.nih.gov/health/taichi/ for the same solutions.

Be well.

NJ aims for Health Insurance for everyone by 2011?

"This is an idea whose time has come as more New Jersey families are struggling with the high cost of health care and more state residents than ever before worry that they may be one serious illness away from bankruptcy" - Sen Joseph Vitale

The numbers are staggering. 1.4 million people in this state lack any health insurance and even with health insurance you may not have enough coverage. I think this is a great idea, however I have seen and attempted to use state medicaid since being diagnosed and found it extremely frustrating and next to impossible to use.

If this plan just expands on medicaid it's doomed. Not enough doctors participate and the ones that do opt out before you can actually make an appointment.

What's more this plan states they will not be able to stop employers from dropping health coverage once the state plan is in effect.

It needs a lot of work.

In regards to just cancer care, the cost is going up and I saw an article online this week about Oncologists addressing treatment costs with patients prior to treatment. Giving patients what would be pricing guidelines with various options like a cable TV bundle seems to me like an ass backwards plan.

If given the basic care option of $30,000.00 for "x" amount of treatments with "x" type of side effects gets you these odds...

However if you upgrade to the next level at $60,000.00 for "x" treatments and "x" side effects provides you with these odds...

And finally the Premium package for $150,000.00 gets you this treatment schedule and only these side effects and almost certainly locks you into remission by the end of the month!

Choosing a treatment option to save my life like I might choose how many TV channels I want seems absolutely absurd to me. The article stated that cheaper options mean you will look sick and will lose your hair and will not be able to hide your disease from co-workers. But the pricier options may have fewer side effects and may not impact your life as drastically.

My 6 months of chemo totalled $104,000.00 with the most expensive part being the white blood cell booster I got after each treatment. That shot of Neulasta cost $5500.00 a shot. I had chemo every two weeks and the very next day following treatment meant I got shot of Neulasta in the arm.

ELEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS for two shots in the arm...per month.

Did you know $72.1 billion was spent on cancer treatments in 2004?

I understand the technology to create newer, better drugs is a necessary evil but it's sadly a life shattering realization when you accept the fact that your life will never be the same because of a disease like cancer and the need to make better drugs means a larger pass on cost to the "consumer."

Everything changes and the financial damage in our lives is still working itself out.

The insurance system in this country is severely damaged and I can't see any way it will ever be corrected. I don't think it's possible. I unfortunately can relate to how fast one disease can ruin your life and change the landscape of your hopes and dreams.

Like I said everything changes.

Weighing costs for treatments and therapies is like choosing which child to keep. How do you put a price on the health of a family member?

"Sorry grandma we can only afford the basic option and that means your chemo and radiation is most certainly going to make you sick and has 13 pages of known side effects and there is a 40% chance it will beat the cancer but if I get a raise next year we can refinance the house and maybe we can swing for the next level up and get you a 65% chance the drugs will beat the cancer...but then we won't be able to go on vacation for the next 10 years...but hang in there"

The article states we need to treat cost as another side effect of treatment and to consider cost as a very real element to dealing with a cancer diagnosis. It has to be addressed but what is someone supposed to do when given the choice of taking the $5500.00 shot to boost your white blood cells or risk infection and postpone treatment because of complications from the disease which in the long run lowers your ability to fight the disease altogether?

You opt for the $5500.00 shot.

I wasn't given such options, I was told what the best treatment was that would work. And maybe that's because my insurance at that point was Aetna and they allowed for better options and we didn't have to discuss how it was going to be covered.

I don't know.

I do know when you are diagnosed you don't need any more stress in your life than the diagnosis itself. But life is what it is and stress is the heartbeat of life.

Life = Stress

Stress = Life


...and Cancer sucks.

It's Always Something (by Rick Springfield)

* This song was adopted by us a looooong time ago. It seems to fit as each second ticks off the clock. You never know what's around the corner, just as life settles down...you get hit with something else...


THE LYRICS: (Rick Springfield)

I look around me and I see what I wanted and what I settled forYeah, I've got the heart of a Joan of Arc but the soul of a gigolo.

I've been good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Anytime I stopped to smell the roses they drew blood from me.

Do you know what I mean?You never ever get away clean.

But it's alright,Yeah, touchdown, turn around, flag on the play.

It's always something, you know it is, it's always something, It's always something, everyday, it's always something.

When I was a kid the teachers and the priests said,"Why do you let him run around like that?"My father said, "If the boy wants to play guitar, I say we let him."Through the hard years he was my rock when I just could not win.

So it goes y'know my father died just before my leaky ship came in.

Do you know what I mean?
You never ever get away clean. Oh, but it's alright yeah.

Down one, homerun, your dog steals the ball.

I step up to the table in the middle of my life and I take my cards and I check them twice.
I've got a killer hand and I'm ready to stake my claim,the cops raid the game....it's always something...

THE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGSLxHOFGRI



...Be well.

Check it out: BLOGGED.com rated this blog...

See the two items on the right? One is my rating as per the web site: BLOGGED.com.

www.blogged.com (Find Better Blogs) is their tag line. They rated my little ol' cancer blog here and to my surprise rated me pretty high.

I am humbled. Thank you Blogged.com's editors at large. I thought I'd leave that ditty up for a while. I'm kind of proud of it.


Below that is the one Bugs Bunny cartoon I can watch til I'm blue in the face.
"Hare Raising Hare" from 1946 is a gem. I love this one. It has my all time favorite live ever...

I hope to one day use this line as I quit my last job ever...

"Don't think it hasn't been a little slice of heaven, cause it hasn't"

Take a look, enjoy.

Be well.

Bunch of stuff to think about...

Heal Magazine has an article about the mounting medical debt piling up in this country. I for one can relate. http://www.healtoday.com/magazine/v2n1/knowledge/debt/index.php

There is also an article about the "late-effect" heart and lung problems associated with Cancer treatments. Lymphoma survivors (myself included) are in the risk category. I was told of the possible damage ABVD can have on my heart and lungs down the road...the problem is not knowing how far down the road. I believe the amount of chemo is relative to the eventual heart and lung damage, but the risks are still there. I was born with a heart murmur, but they told me I checked out okay on my heart scans and (PFT) pulmonary function tests prior to chemo. So we'll see...

http://www.healtoday.com/magazine/v2n1/body/lungwatch/index.php (this is a summary of the story)

I am 10 months into remission. I wake up everyday reminded that I don't feel right, mostly joint and shoulder pain. I blame the chemo for what is probably accelerated osteo-something-or-other. The weather is breaking and I need to finally get outside and be more active and shed some of this weight I gained back post treatment. I also suspect the activity will lessen the bone pain a little bit. But everyday I see the scars and I feel the pain and I hear a new story about someone with Cancer.

Last night my wife gave blood at the local grammar school for a 10 year old boy with a blood cancer who needs constant transfusions. I would have given blood...but I'm not allowed to for the next 4 years or so. This sucks too because I am O-Positive.

I watch the people I work with take countless smoke breaks and I think about my experience with cancer and the drugs and the IVs and the Port-a-catheter and the fatigue and I want to SCREAM at the top of my lungs..."DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING?!?"

If what I went thru from my radical nephrectomy to 6 months of chemo every two weeks was "easy" because it was Hodgkin's ("the good cancer to get if you have to get any"- or so they say) I can only imagine what lung cancer must be like...or something else brought on by smoking...

And then the news yesterday about the medicines/prescription drugs found in drinking water www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336286,00.html

(A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.
In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.)

(And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.
"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.)


They apparently they can't filter them out properly and the side effects these chemicals will have on the human body and the animal food sources we eat and how that will affect the human body...makes me want to SCREAM!!!!!!!! We have too many drugs for too many ailments. Let alone how long these drugs have been in the water and who has gotten sick because of them...

(This contamination would qualify as ENVIRONMENTAL CARCINOGENS)

There is no single place and no single thing that is safe. Everything will kill you.

There is a lyric to a Rick Springfield song that escapes me right now but the line refers to life as a "suicide mission."

I suppose it sounds like a bold statement to make when people respond to the drugs in the drinking water problem or smoking or drinking or whatever... "You gotta die of something" and while that is mostly true we all will die from something, I was in that neighborhood once already (even if all I did was look at the brochures) I toyed with the idea that this cancer was going to kill me...it's a logical step when you're diagnosed and I went there. But it's a stupid thing to say- because when you contemplate your own mortality it leaves you cold and empty. Lets see how tough you really are when death is circling overhead. Jerk!

I had to imagine my kids growing up without me, my wife a widow, my funeral. I may have only done that a few times early on after diagnosis when we didn't know anything yet...but I have been down that street.

Death smells astringent and tastes like metal.


A sick planet means sick people!

How much longer mankind walks on this earth remains to be seen but it's only a matter of time before some drug resistant super bug emerges from a section of rain forest we paved over to put up yet another Wal-mart, Lowes, Home Depot, Starbucks, Bed, Bath and Beyond and Panera Bread strip mall.

We have it coming to us. This planet will shakes us off like a dog with fleas. We are the next dinosaur. It's only a matter of time.



Think about it.

Be well.

Why We Write...

http://whywewriteseries.wordpress.com/

I found this site during the "writer's strike" and as I continue to aspire and write everything down because someday, in some way I will "use" it...I find this site very interesting. A peak into the fragile minds of people who write because that's all they know how to do.

The site appears to be continuing with contributions by more than just Writers Guild of America writers. I suppose sooner than later I will send in my essay. I wrote a similar piece for Helium.com a few months back; http://www.helium.com/items/173291-found-writing-therapeutic-started

On the opposite side of my so called writing life is my new career in Emergency Services and my training is coming up on 90 hours and soon enough I will be worked into the schedule as a part timer and hopefully pick up some time and experience for the police agency I work for.

Some personal (legal and insurance) issues related to my medical bills and expenses are still working themselves out and my health related concerns seem to only involve continuous bone pain that spikes from time to time with little or no warning.

Otherwise...not much to report.


Be well.

Life continues to let me down...

But Foo Fighters never fail me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVboOdX9icA


Can't get enough of this song.