Might be Going Away Again

Figured I should put up a quick post since I think there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to be back in the hospital today. I don’t know if it’ll make any sense, since I’ve been whacked out on pain meds since yesterday and I’m still a little loopy/shaky.

Thursday when I saw SuperCoop, I had started having some chest pain. It was primarily in my sternum and felt a lot like the old Neupogen/Neulasta type of bone pain. It would appear rather randomly, though elevation changes (going from standing to sitting to lying down) would usually bring it about. I initially felt it was probably just my brain causing the pain, since that’s the area we were going to be discussing. I told Dr. Kang about it at the start of the appointment, then didn’t think of it again after he asked me some questions and did some poking around.

Friday was the same as Thursday, though maybe slightly worse. Saturday was horrible. I tried to put up with it for as long as I could, but it was too much. It had gotten to the point where if I was sitting up in bed and slid down a little, it would hurt. My cough also started getting much worse as well. The pain is a throbbing sort of pain that seems to be tied in with a really strong/hard heartbeat. You know how you can feel your heart pounding after you’ve held your breath for a long time? That’s the heartbeat thing. Imagine having that happen to you after your sternum’s been broken open and you’ll have an idea of what this is like.

Aside from the elevation changes, by the afternoon the pain was happening to me at random times when I wasn’t moving. We called the oncology fellow and he had us go to the ER. You want to get a private bed super fast in the ER? Be a post-stem cell transplant patient with chest pain. Not only do you get hooked up, everyone listens to you.

They took some blood and blood cultures and a chest x-ray. Everything came back normal. The doc came back in and said SuperCoop wanted to see me Monday morning. We walk out of the ER and suddenly my chest feels better. As Barb will attest, I did a lot of cursing at that point, as it seemed my stupid brain had indeed been pulling one over on me. I was miffed to say the least. Then, around 11:00 at night, the pain started coming back.

I woke up around 3 AM in searing agony. In addition to the whole chest thing, my left arm (that I was lying on) felt like it had been ripped out of the socket and poorly reattached. The coughing was worse, which didn’t help the chest or the arm. I finally found some of my pain pills and started popping them down. They don’t completely take the pain away, but at least make it less frequent.

Sunday was pretty much complete hell all day long. I couldn’t really sit comfortably or lie down comfortably or stand comfortably or walk… you get the idea. In addition, my head’s in the clouds from the drugs and my arms and legs are all wobbly. The pain at this point seems to be all around my chest cavitiy – back, front, shoulders, sides – if I cough or burp or breathe, different parts shoot pain through my body.

So yeah, today I’m pretty messed up and I’m getting ready to go see SuperCoop. Something bad is going on inside me and I don’t know what – I can only hope that they’ll know at the hospital. I’m figuring that they might hold me there ’til they get it all figured out or that this might be some kind of infection (can the lining of your lungs get inflamed and infected?) for which they’ll need to pump me full of IV antibiotics. Whee.

Mom and Dad – I’ll give you a call later tonight to let you know the verdict and where you’ll be able to find me. Everyone else, I’ll be back to posting whenever I’m back to posting.