Plop,plop, fizz,fizz, where's the relief?

[This is a posting Jessica was planning to post back on Dec 6th.]

Monday December 6th, 2010 Happy St. Nick's Day

Hi everyone, I am still not sleeping very well. I still have my siblings taking turns helping me pump my belly and massaging my back when the pain is severe, which is most of the time. Friends and coworkers are welcome to come by and help. Do not hesitate to call me. Yes, I am in pain but if it is tolerable, I will pick up and get the phone. I am the one who is afraid to call you if it may be too late or if you are too busy. I've called my onc nurse practitioner and agreed that I have to find a primary doctor, one to coordinate all my care, know of anyone at UIC that you can recommend?

My onc nurse practitioner did increase my liquid morphine dose SO, now I fall asleep mid-anything, I could be eating, while sitting on the toilet, while they're pumping my stomach, my spoon is mid-air, head tilted back and , I'm half asleep and my food gets cold. I could be that way for a while until my family wakes me up if I do not jerk myself awake. I feel like Peppermint Patty, where's Marci? Should I get seatbelt for my dining room chair? That could be another reason I don't get the phone too. It's another reason why it takes me a while to eat.

Anyway, the surgery nurse practitioner recommended that I stop the lactulose, start sennacot and that I get a colonoscopy. I asked her about my labs, for example, my hemoglobin and platelets since they started trending down. Who is watching that, hence another reason to find a gen med doc. It seems the patient is the one doing it nowadays. It is a good thing I know what I need, the general population would not know who to turn to.

One night the senna gave me severe cramps, ask my family. Crying, shortness of breath, moaning and bent over in the middle of the night, not once but several times. I know I am extremely constipated. My family, drew the straw when I desperately woke my dad to massage my back. I am suffering, my sisters and brother have to work, my niece has school and my dad just went to lay down a few minutes prior. From now on, my sister said to wake her instead. Well another sister started bringing home the prune juice, the big guns. I had spent this past weekend on the toilet, with severe rectal pain, bleeding, cramping, and using the flushable moisture wipes with aloe on them. God bless my sister who is also a nurse and kindly digitally disimpacted me. I'm grabbing onto her leg, almost lifting her up, crying out. She cleared me out the best she could. One change, things are moving down there, still with discomfort but it is coming out for now. I am still pumping and getting my massages but at least there is painful progress.

[I got a CT scan mid-December and I showed that I did not have any bowel obstructions (yay!), therefore the constipation I experienced must have come from the meds.]