This has been a rough week. I have been in the hospital for 3 to 5 hours every day of this week and I have had quite a bit of discomfort. Mel informs me that what I describe as discomfort most people would label as pain. She is clearly not Asian and has not been taught to not complain. Suck it up and move on. The thought was that today would be an easy day and that I would be in and out in an hour once they drained some more fluid. I went in for 9 and did not leave until just after 1pm. The staff are wonderful but it is not a super awesome experience. When I went in this morning the initially drained 1 liter quite quickly and then stopped as they wanted to check my blood pressure. The blood pressure dropped so they wanted to wait 30 minutes before taking more. After 30 minutes my blood pressure has not risen so I said yesterday we went for a quick jaunt to help things going. During this time they had told me that they had found some pus within the fluid so they wanted to run blood work on me. They called the lab to come up to draw blood from both arms. While we were waiting for lab to come up we went for a walk and happened to see the lab technician so hurried back to the room. I do not move very fast as every step was quite painful. Last night I had mentioned that if I did not move everything was awesome. Well during the night and this morning I had quite a bit of pain. I told Mel that the pain was excruciating and she was concerned as I never say that. I can feel the tube inside of me and every step I take there is shooting radiating pain from the tube all the way up inside my body to the shoulder. There are nerve endings connecting those areas and every step, every movement triggered this. It is hard to describe what I feels like exactly but it sucks the life out of you as the pain shoots up your body internally. It is a sharp acute pain that travels up and then starts over again. Once I had been drained a bit the pain subsided a bit and I could move a bit faster. The lab technician drew blood, they took my vitals and proceeded to drain me more, 1 liter at a time. The doctor came by and told the nurse that he was going to write me a prescription and to give me some antibiotics IV. I asked the nurse if she could use the port and she said she did not know how and she would try starting an IV. For those unaware, I have a dreadful success rate for most people giving me an IV. She was just as successful as most and after 2 failed attempts she contacted the nurses in the cancer center to come up and insert a needle into the port. The nurse came up and noticed the rash and she ended up switching the bandage types that she had for another that I should not react to. As she was cleaning it she scraped against the incision as I am not completely healed yet and I told her that it was a bit painful. Second time using the port it was not as bad as the first time so things are getting better. I ended up on the antibiotics for 30 minutes as the fluid stopped draining as I was empty. In total they managed to drain about 7 liters over the two days. Mel told her father that I would need a ride between 10:30 and 11:00. I kept on giving updates indicating at least another hour. When the drip was done they started unhooking everything and I knew that I could go home in 20 minutes. Pulling out the tube from my abdomen was just like I remembered the other times. Painful. I do not think that everyone has such a pleasant experience as I do, but I did not enjoy it at all. They would not let me walk to the entrance so I had to wait for a wheelchair and they brought me out. A lot of the pain has been reduced but there is still a lot of discomfort as I can feel my internals shifting around and being reorganized. Women who have gone through childbirth would understand.
I thought that I could eat when I got home so we got some sushi. Each bite to my stomach expanding and changing the internal organization. I ate a bit, not to the point of being full but to the point where I could not deal with the discomfort. I know I can eat more but it is difficult right now. Drinking causes the same issues as the stomach expands things shift into what the new normal is. Yesterday it took until late into the evening when things settled down and I could eat more. My blood pressure is low as it is and I get light headed when the discomfort starts. Hopefully next week will go more smoothly. I can not shower for 24hours which sucks because I could not shower yesterday either. Mel had told a coworker that we have been battling through this since September when we knew and even earlier when I noticed a weight drop. I am assuming that I have dropped at least 15lbs from this experience and will weigh myself tomorrow.
I think that for the most part we have been doing well and we have more good days then bad days. The issue is that when I do have bad days they tend to be really bad and i struggle to eat. I think that is what stresses Mel out a lot is that I never complain so when I say things are not going well she gets more concerned. We need to appreciate that even through all of this that everything is awesome. My health has been relatively good besides this trivial stage 4 cancer thing. With the PIPAC treatment hopefully it will reduce this build up. This weekend my sister will be coming to Sudbury and we can start planning the trip to Spain. We have not heard back from Henry Ford yet so I think we will end up going to Spain for the first treatment. It should all be a lot of fun regardless. I am rather tired now so it is difficult to document things so I will stop for today.
Quoc Hao