Maybe

Maybe it was all in the mind.  The past few weeks have raised my concern over my health.  My lower back hurt, particularly around the left kidney.  That’s where the cancer reappeared on the fifth anniversary of its first discovery.

There was a sudden uptick in leakage.  I had been enjoying a pretty much regimented seven day wear cycle for my ostomy bags but suddenly I was burning through them at an alarming rate, in some cases two a day.

There is an unusual hardness around the stoma, specifically on the bottom side.  My ostomy nurses tell me not to worry that with all the reworking of my plumbing something as simple as constipation will cause a harness to appear.  Poking about the web however tells me that it’s not unusual for a hernia to appear requiring minor or major surgery depending on the extent of it.

There is pressure in my lower abdomen.  Nothing I can pinpoint precisely.  The best I can do is describe it as if there were a large weight just sitting low in the abdomen.  No pain, just there.

Finally, there was this endless tiredness.  On some days total exhaustion.  Bad enough that when walking I felt like I weighted double my weight.  It was tiring just to walk.  I was waking up in the middle of the night, almost always right around 3AM.

So last night, in desperation, I took a full mg of Xanax and a healthy (yeah me) shot of my favorite Irish whiskey.  Slept the entire night and woke up feeling pretty good.

I’m going to do the same tonight and see if I feel at least the same tomorrow and hopefully better.  If that’s it I’ll go back to adding Xanax as a sleep aid like I did while receiving chemo.

Maybe all the worry is really about not getting sufficient rest.  Maybe all the worry is for not.  I don’t really know.

I DO know though that I’m going to talk this all over with my oncologist and get his thoughts on it.  It will no doubt mean a CT and more lab work but I can handle those.

End the end, if I’m clear a huge load of stress will be lifted off of my shoulder.  More importantly, it will take away a lot of worry that Marvina is carrying around too.  A worry that I wish I could spare her from and could, if I were to choose the path of hiding things from her.

But I promised I wouldn’t.  So my only alternative is to prove to both of us that I am indeed okay and if I’m not then I’ll have to show her that life will go on.