Cancer Survivors Network

Hi - I finally escaped from being in the hospital three days. It started with just my counts being low and getting a transfusion, but my blood pressure dropped really low and I got fluid around my heart and lungs and had to be admitted. This is where everything went really bad for me. They had to handle the meds of course and they were late or forgot them or whatever. The hospital is not Sloan it's just a community hospital that was having a very poor med service problem. To make matters worse, I needed a stool softener and desperately needed a sitz bath. I had such a bad time with pain management gone badly out of control and unbelievably painful bowel movements. Finally my doctor was able to explain that the pain meds needed to be given to me whether I complained of pain being a 2 or a 10 or nothing. And got assigned a very good and understanding nurse. But it was very a very difficult time for me. I am so glad to be home.

The good news is that my platelets have come up on their own by quite a bit and it looks like I can finish my treatments this week. Week six with chemo and radiation begins tomorrow. I feel ready although I still have some fluid retention issues.

One other minor pain management issue is that I am am sensitive to Sulfa drugs and that medication they normally use at this time of the tissue breaking down, etc. is a sulfa product. Sloan has been really terrific though and gave me some RadiaDres Gel Sheets which are terrific but hard to keep on. I hate to think how much they must cost.

If anyone else has had this problem and has any ideas, let me know.

So glad to have all of you. Thank you for all your encouragement and information so far.