A Minor Setback... 7/30/07

A Minor Setback…

Sorry for the delay between postings. I actually have not been doing so hot, and wasn’t really motivated to write you all about that…

Last Wednesday was actually a pretty good day and I was really looking forward to building on that. But Thursday came and I threw my back out. I probably stupidly went to work anyway and toughed though the day. I finally couldn’t see straight through the pain and drove home, with just the simple lifting of my legs to operate the pedals almost more than I could take. I got home went to bed, iced my back and realized that I had maxed out my pain meds and still could not find relief; Time to call Nurse Kathy (the awesome nurse to my oncologist, Dr. Lozada). She said to go to the ER that this wasn’t good. That they’d order an MRI for me. I knew she was going to say this, but I literally broke down and wept at that, because that meant 3-4 hours sitting and waiting in the waiting room (sitting is not a good option for me in this state), plus I dread the MRI. I am highly claustrophobic and the ancient ER MRI and I have tangled in the past. It is an old fashioned one, only goes head in first, and I barely fit in it, eliciting horrific thoughts of entombing/entrapment/etc… The last time it took 4 tries to get me in that MRI machine and tons of prayer for courage. Needless to say, I was not happy about going. I calmed down through much prayer and left with Amy around 5:00pm.

We sat in the waiting room for 2 hours, but fortunately Nurse Kathy instructed them to get me to a gurney after triage saw me. I then lay there until 9:30pm when they wheeled me down to the MRI. I got in on one try (with the aid of some anti-anxiety meds), and did two full scans, one without and one with contrast dye (total in the machine time: about an hour). I then lay back on my gurney until 3:30am. It was how long it took for a radiologist to read it and tell us the report of a fractured L3. I was admitted to the hospital at 4:00am…

SO… Friday and the weekend sucked. Especially in light of my hopes of the continued improvement I was expecting. This was a definite setback.

But like all things, when you get knocked down, you gotta get back up. Walter Payton, the greatest running back ever to play the game is my inspiration. He ran for something like 16,500 yards in his career. That is over 10 miles of running with the ball. But the really impressive point to this was his persistence. He “only” averaged around 4 yards a carry (that is a fantastic yards per carry…). That meant, the whole time while he ran hard for those 10 miles, a group of big angry guys, all trying to stop/hurt him, tackled him to the ground every 12 feet… You gotta get back up…

That is what I am trying to do here. Every setback. Get back up, get going. This is what you can pray for me at this reading.

And I see this focus change to radiation therapy as a side step at worst in my treatment plan. Obviously we wished we could have avoided it, but simply need to address this issue for a bit…. So as not to lose momentum on the chemo, I will continue light doses of chemo on Fridays.

And this might actually be a blessing in disguise… Because one real important thing to consider is that we are taking it right to the tumors now. Killing them even more directly. There is great satisfaction in that and the doctors think my back pain should greatly diminish over the next few weeks. PRAY FOR THAT!!! ☺

And the fight goes on.

Thanks so very much for your continued prayers. I love you all.

Eric