How long is a piece of string?...

Well it's about six weeks on from my 'little bleeder' ordeal and I'm feeling about 90% back to normal. The pain is completely under control but most importantly the panic, distress and loss of faith and determination i had has settled down and I've put things back into order in my head. It's also been explained that the chances of my adrenal gland doing that again, my time bomb panic, is highly unlikely, but hey, we are talking about me. So I've decided to do as they say, 'prepare for the worse but hope for the best'. Every night I still ask the angels and my Dad to take away all the cancer from my body so that i can at least see Joe grow into a happy settled young man. That is my biggest wish and i will fight this disease until that day and beyond.

While i was recuperating my wonderful mum, my trusty side-kick, stayed and helped out round the house which was a godsend because i got a terrible spasm in my back that was preventing me from breathing in. I couldn't move for about two weeks and was prescribed diazapan and lorazapan. This left me like a stunned mullet throughout the day, zombie for you non-kiwi slang readers. My biggest concern was that i couldn't breathe when my back had the spasm until it relaxed, which some times was about 30-50 seconds. My G.P, who i might add is also wonderful, said 'don't worry you'll pass out first and then start breathing again'. That boosted my confidence...not, but i did laugh with him about that. Fortunately that now has also all settled down and I'm no longer needing the 'azapans so my head is so much clearer.

Today was my follow up with the wonderful Dr Alice. I keep telling her I'm going to make her famous but i don't think she believes me. One thing i do know is that i love the look on her face when she first comes into the room and sees me. To me it's like happy amazement. I know she's got to be practical and give me the facts, and I'm grateful she is like that, but I think secretly i do surprise her how quickly i bounce back even though I'm sure she thinks I'm a fruit cake because of my faith in the Vibrational Therapy.

We discussed the boob on my back because it's starting to effect my shoulder at night when i sleep and as you know i couldn't have surgery last month because i was too weak. So the surgery option was put back on the table, along with sleeping on a hemorrhoid pillow to cushion the surrounding area. That made me laugh! I could have done with that when they were shoving jugs of laxatives down my throat! As expected the boob that was the size of an orange is now edging towards a grapefruit so really the surgery needs to be done now before the lump gets any bigger and can't be surgically removed. The problem is, its not an insignificant little surgery and as Dr Alice says, melanoma is so unpredictable we don't know whether I'm going to live another two weeks, two months or with my determination two years. It's as long as a piece of string. Apparently she has had patients come in for their follow up appointments looking fine and two weeks later, dead! That's melanoma for you. My dilemma is, every time i have any kind of treatment the cancer goes crazy, as if my body is fighting the treatment and not the cancer. Generally i mean chemotherapy and radiotherapy so i don't know if surgery would effect me the same way so I've decided to leave it to toss around in my head for a week or two. I'm very interested in a particular trial taking place called PLX4032 that is having fantastic results with tumour shrinkage, but I'll tell you more about that in a couple of weeks when I've been to see the Professor in charge of trials at the Churchill in Oxford.

Now, as i was saying, I'm preparing for the worse but hoping for the best. Fortunately all the doom and gloom stuff got sorted in January when I was told I had until May so it was the other little things that needed dealing with. Firstly my iPhone!

When i found out the tumours had grown i was so pissed off. Aside from all the obvious reasons my iPhone contract on the 3GS had run out and i was so looking forward to getting the white version of the 4 to come at Christmas but i thought sod it and went straight down to O2 and upgraded to the iPhone 4 and i love it. I can skype my sister in New Zealand whenever i want and that alone is worth it. Besides, i thought what's the worse they can do? Take the phone back when i die? Who cares! Joe has my 3GS and Mum doesn't have a clue how to use it anyway so they can have it back. I did feel very naughty, but it just gives me another reason i can't go any where for 18 months!

Then there was Dexter. No, this isn't a family pet it's the American television drama that I'm hooked on. Season 4 just finished on T.V and I'm going to be so annoyed if I'm not here for season 5 so i cheated and have been watching it online. This by no means is me admitting defeat, it's me being too impatient to wait until next year because the last episode was so dramatic! Mind you, it's not just Dexter, there's Greys Anatomy, Private Practice, Lie to Me...but I'll be patient for them.

The pain that brought no tears...

Have you ever been in hospital, in excruciating pain and the doctor asks you,

"On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the least and 10 being the most pain you've ever been in, what would you rate yourself?"

Well a couple of Fridays ago at 2.30am, i experienced 10x10x10x10!! As usual, when all is quiet on the home and health front, i woke up with a tummy ache. Within five minutes that ache turned into a pain and started riding round my back. On my 'old' pain scale i would have classed it a 4, bearable. So I got up to take some Paracetamol and snuggled back down into bed. Ten minutes later my 4 had become a 6, so i got up again took some Codeine and thought "that'll knock you on the head you little shit", and snuggled back down into bed. Another ten minutes of tossing and turning in my bed later, my pain was now a 9 and i knew something wasn't right so i got up and took oral Morphine. The pain in my back was excruciating and i didn't know what to do with myself. I couldn't lay down, i couldn't sit, i just found myself walking around the room or leaning against my wardrobe swaying my hips like i did when i was in labour. Then the vomiting started! The pain was getting worse by the minute and was a serious 10+ by this stage and because I'd been sick i didn't know if the pain killers would still be in my system or not so i called the on call doctor. He was going to ring back as soon as he could so at that stage I rang Mum, my 'safe face', to get her round.

By the time Mum got there, ten minutes later, i was on all fours on the bedroom floor vomiting and groaning in pain saying "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god", the pain being at least 15 out of 10 and that's when i told her to call the ambulance. They were literally there in five minutes and funnily enough that was when the on call doctor rang back! From then all i can remember is thinking breathe Lisa the pain can't get worse than this...but it did, i would think again, breathe Lisa the pain can't get worse than this...but it did! It got to the stage I thought how much pain can a human body take before it gives up? The paramedics gave me gas and air which didn't touch the pain, but concentrating on my breathing and biting and screaming down that tube was giving me something else to think about. Mum couldn't come in the ambulance so she followed behind with Joe in the car. I was so scared that that was when i realised i was in so much pain i couldn't cry. I really did think my battle with this terrible disease was over and my poor Mum and Joe had to see me and remember me in that much pain. From then on I don't remember much else.

I came to in A&E, hooked up to all sorts and being injected with god knows but i didn't care as long as they took the pain away. On the pain scale i was buzzing but it was still at least a 7. According to Mum, aka Connie Beachamp from Holby City, my blood pressure was very low and my heart rate was very high. I was put through a CT scanner only to find that i had internal bleeding coming from my Adrenal Gland. This is where my hope and faith got a shake up and that bloody hypothetical 4x2 plank of wood that smacks me round the head occasionally had now become a railway sleeper!

Over the weekend i remained in CDU where they tried to maintain my blood pressure and get on top of the pain until Monday when i was moved to the Oncology ward. That's when Dr Alice came in and i could tell by the look on her face it wasn't good. Apparently the cancer had spread further and the mass on the Adrenal Glands had grown quite substantially which is what caused the left one to bleed. Alice had never come across an Adrenal Gland bleeder before so an Endocrinologist had to be consulted with because the Adrenal Glands excrete Cortisone which raises blood pressure and because mine wasn't working that's why i was dangerously low, also the fact that i had had internal bleeding didn't help. I tried joking telling Alice "i told you I'd make you famous", but inside i was so scared. It was explained that the capsule of an Adrenal Gland is like the skin of a grape and it has no pain sensors so it stretched and stretched till it couldn't stretch any more and that's why i didn't feel it growing until it bled. As if that information wasn't enough, we then had to have the 'rescusatation' talk. Wow!! I was not expecting that! Thank God mum was there to take it all in as well because all i could think was "this isn't right...i haven't been in any pain for months... i felt well up to now...it wasn't in the tea leaves...I'm not ready to go!!!" 

Dr Alice was fantastic and as compassionate as she could be. She explained that because of the uncertainty and rarity of my 'little bleeder', there was a chance that the Adrenal Gland could hemorrhage again but more seriously next time which then could cause my heart to give out. As a rule I'm pro-life. Take any measure, do anything just save me but she explained that because i have a young healthy heart, if my heart were to give out it would be because something more serious had given out on the inside and that even if they could resuscitate me i could just end up on life support and not be myself anyway. Looking at it from that point of view put a different light on it so I opted for the 'do not rescusatate'.

I found myself in shock for a couple of days. I was crying for no reason, but i had every reason. I always thought if this damn disease did get me, i would just start getting more and more unwell and know my end of life was coming but now it had been explained as if i was a time bomb. In my mind i was weighing up the pros and cons to both scenarios....firstly my body shutting down over a couple of weeks while i was so high on morphine i couldn't function or secondly going out with a bang when the adrenal gland burst and my heart giving out. I did decided option two was better but then i had to explain this to Joe so that he was prepared if it happened again. This was heartbreaking.