Sucks

In our household, we--or, honestly, just I--have a way of describing things that aren't going so well:  "This sucks a monkey's large, hairy penis."

The good news:  I am healthy.  My brain tumor hasn't grown, and I don't have any other conditions that are life threatening.  I do recognize that this is incredibly good news, and I'm relieved and grateful.

The bad news:  the last few days have definitely sucked a monkey penis.

On Tuesday I had an MRI and an appointment with my neuro-oncologist at Duke Medical Center.  This means that Monday was spent driving to North Carolina, and grappling with the awareness that I was about to have a test that might let me know that the tumor was growing, and that my life was going to be far shorter than I want it to be.  This is true all the time, for all of us--we have no idea how much life we have left--but the MRI makes that vague, easily ignorable truth far more palpable for me.  When I got to my friends' house in Fayetteville Monday night and James asked me how I was, I burst into tears.  That was Monday.

Tuesday I managed to be in a state of anxiety that kept me from being weepy.  I was wound up, wound up, wound up.  Catherine generously came along while I had my MRI (this time the nurse didn't have to go probing around inside my arm with the IV needle, looking for the vein, so that was cool), and she sat in the waiting room with me for 90 minutes until we were called back to meet with Jim.  He was great, as usual, and the appointment was generally quite reassuring, given that the MRI showed that the tumor hasn't grown at all.  Then I drove home, the relief taking the form of exhaustion.  I was wiped out.  I got home with enough energy to spend a little while snuggling with Biffle, and then I had to go to bed.  That was Tuesday.

Wednesday afternoon at around 1:00, I was hit with an abdominal pain so sudden and so awful that I had to stagger, bent at the waist, to the door, collapse on the stairs, and say to Biffle, "I need help."  He took me to the ER at MUSC.

I find that I want to describe the pain, or its effects, but I'm going to resist that reality-TV-drama urge.  Pain is hard to communicate--it's so deeply personal--there's no way that anyone else can actually feel the pain that you're feeling.*  Indeed, they might think that you're a wimp, or that you're faking it.  I was neither.  It was bad.  I freaked the resident out so badly (she looked terrified) that she brought the attending physician to me very quickly, and the attending was incredibly matter-of-fact about pain medication.  "Your heartbeat is fine, you're not running a fever, so you get as much pain medication as you want.  There is no need for you to be in pain."  They gave me a very large dose of something very powerful (Biffle informed me that it sells for big bucks on the street), and it lowered the pain level from a 9 to a 6, I said.  When the attending heard that I was still at 6, she gave me another dose--and that fairly well knocked me out.  Which was good.

At any rate, after nine hours in the ER, they determined that I had an ovarian cyst rupture.  Totally harmless, nothing to worry about.  Claire, who coordinated with Biffle to trade off Maybelle and Alison duties, drove me home.

Today I am worn out and sore.  I have done my best to answer the emails that I haven't gotten to all week because of the medical drama that is my life.  I've canceled all my afternoon appointments.  I'm going to try to relax.  This holiday season has already felt pretty challenging to me, given that Dec. 24 is the anniversary of the seizure that revealed my brain tumor.  As of today, I'm ready for the whole season just to be over.  We've had plenty of action, thank you very much.  Now I'd just like to take it easy.

*This may sound like my own insight, but in fact it comes from a conversation with a friend who deals with a lot of pain in her life, and from Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain.