Shingles bells, shingles bells, or a recurrence all the way??

It all started with a little pain in the back. I was just like "nahhh, whatever, it's surely just my punctuation wound!" I took this as a great excuse to lay around on the couch all day an watch Star Wars. Two days later I could hardly walk. While limping around I started to think "hummm, this hurts a f****** lot too much for just my punctuation wound". And there it was. The first thought of a recurrence. It just appeared in my little brain, first it was just a whisper but the more time passed the more it became a scream.

Because it's not unusual for my type of cancer to grow back on nerves or bones which is very painful and can lead to problems walking depending on where it grows. So I forced myself (okey a lot of the forcing was done by my hubbie ;)) to call my oncologist who said we should take a ct of this immediately. So I dragged myself to the ER. It's interesting how the words "stem cell transplant" can open doors for you. I was immediately put in my own room and the doc came surprisingly fast. In the meantime I was really in pain so he gave me some painkillers IV as a first measure. Okey, he gave me paracetamol which helped... Nothing. I have no idea why the docs in this hospital think that paracetamol is of any other use than for very light headaches.

Anyway, they did a X-ray of my hip and pushed on some very painful spots ("does this hurt? " *squeeze* "aaaaarghl, yeees!" and so on ;)). Diagnosis: sciatica. Take some painkillers, put warmth on it and move.

And that's exactly what I did. And it didn't work. I even tried opiates as painkiller. When they also failed to ease my pain, in the meantime I wasn't even able to walk anymore, I decided to go back to hospital. And there it was again. That little asshole voice whispering "recurrence" and telling you a thousand reasons why it couldn't be sciatica or anything else easy to treat. I pushed it far back in my head, hitting it with my X-ray results, screaming back "Sciatica, bitch!!'.
So another ER (I decided to change hospitals), another doc, another infusion (this one at least helped) and another X-ray. This time also of my spine. Again- everything's fine. Diagnosis: still sciatica. Since all "normal" painkillers failed he offered to take me in and work out a pain therapy plan.

Yep, back in hospital. Woohoo. An anesthetist came over and prescribed me various painkillers, most of them opiates. A nurse saw the meds plan and said that this amount of painkillers could knock out an elephant. Bwahaha, not me, I was still in pain. So they allowed me one pill of opiate every hour if I needed it.

Yeaah man, opiates!!  :)

When I started to get blisters on my leg and other parts of my body things changed (okay the docs in orthopedics just looked at it with that "aha, interesting, what is this?" look on their faces :)). It was finally diagnosed as shingles and I was put in isolation. Aww, how I missed that. Just me and my contagious virus. So as addition to the pain meds I receive aciclovir to fight the shingles.
Luckily they also decided to do an MRT of my lower back and hip. And thank heavens the results are also clean. So no recurrence. You see that stupid voice? I'm still in remission! HA!!!

Nanana, eat THIS, stupid voice!!! 

Since my blood values crashed down we had to cancel some of the painkillers. My leukos are down to 2k so I have to watch out again for any other kind of infection. That's why they want to get me out of the hospital asap because this is a meeting place for infections.

I'm still in pain and can hardly walk but it surely is better than before I came here. So tomorrow I hope I can take my huge pile of... drugs... and limp home. With that big, fat smile on my face only people high on opium have.  :)

P.S.: I wrote this blog on my mobile phone, so exsqueeeeeeze me if it looks strange or has many typos in it!

P.P.S.:

My new mountain med!