Literally. Although technically, the pain is in my hips. But as you know, hips are very close to asses so I feel justified in using the title above.

My hips have been giving me a bit of grief lately but usually only in bed at night. They don’t hurt during the course of the day. I tend to sleep on my side, usually my right side. I’ve noticed over the past few weeks, however, that over the course of a night, I might have to shift my body from my right side to my left side every hour or so. I could take more hydromorphone I guess, to alleviate the pain, but I feel like I need to have some idea of what’s going on in my body. Trying to eliminate all pain all the time seems ridiculous to me. Us humans are built in such a way as pain is pretty much a given whether from overuse, as in doing too much exercise, from injury via trauma, or from things like appendicitis. I want to know what’s going on in my body and it’s pretty hard to do that if I’m always zonked out on opioids.

Pain, pain, pain! I’ve had lots of that in my lifetime although just looking at me you wouldn’t know that. I look pretty good for an old guy. Still, pain has been an expected companion most of my life. Mygawd, in my early twenties I had a laminectomy, a disk removed in my the lower back because of a planer mill accident, but I’ve already mentioned that in a previous blog post. I had to be peeled off the ceiling a number of times from that one. No pain has ever stopped me from doing things, however. It may have stiffled my dreams of being a world-class athlete, but it never stopped me from running and walking fairly long distances, and farting around in my shop and studio. Of course, I had to be careful. Sometimes my back would send out signals for me to back off, and I would, not being a complete idiot.

A few years ago, though, I had had enough with pain and my doctor had had enough of me complaining about pain, I guess, so he sent me to a pain clinic in Nanaimo. Well, that was interesting. I assume that pain clinics are good for pain caused by overt trauma and that sort of thing. My experience is that as far as chronic pain is concerned, they struggle with coming up with good solutions. At the end of my time at the clinic, they were thinking of implanting a tens machine in my side at the site of my 2002 kidney surgery. The site of my kidney surgery from 2002 still pains me. However, I wasn’t about to have a tens machine implanted in my body so the clinic and I parted company. The clinic still exists doing lots of good, I’m sure, and I still exist too, still in pain. Well, there ya go!

Over the last few months, as you know, I have been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer, just another reason to have pain. I have no shortage of reasons to have pain. Now, however, my family doctor is only too happy to prescribe opiates. He’s always been fairly liberal when it comes to prescribing pain medications, but now I especially appreciate his willingness to treat my pain with whatever it takes. One thing is that treating the pain from my bone marrow cancer also has the benefit of dealing with some of my chronic pain issues. That has been good although I’m still in pain. I’m certainly not trying to eradicate all my pain. Feeling pain means I’m still alive. Of course eating sticky buns has the same effect, but that’s a lot more pleasant than feeling pain as an indicator that there is still life in these old (now eroded) bones.

My oncologist, however, seems to be clueless about pain. When we visited him in Victoria last year I was in a lot of pain, obviously so, I thought. He told me to take a couple of Tylenol. He, he, he. A couple of Tylenol? Sure, dude.I can’t imagine he’s ever felt any kind of acute pain so he just can’t relate. Ibuprofen works well for me, but I can’t take anti-inflammatory meds because I have only one kidney. Pity. I think I could avoid a lot of opioid use if I could take anti-inflammatory meds. In any case, my oncologist, in exasperation, I think, because I keep telling him that I’m in pain, and he doesn’t want to hear that, decided that I should go to a pain clinic. Well, I was not particularly receptive to that, but after a little deliberation with Carolyn, I decided to humour him. So. off I go to the pain clinic only it’s not called that.

Yesterday, I got a call from ‘Leanne’ from the Palliative Symptom Management Clinic which has a branch here in the Comox Valley. Now before you get all weirded out by the word ‘Palliative’ in the title, don’t worry, I’m not getting signed up for end-of-life care just yet. Palliative care, it turns out, refers to pain management in general. We’ve come to associate it with end-of-life care, but it doesn’t have to refer to that. Leanna had lots of questions for me like: do you have a gun in the house? Are you depressed? Do you have place for the nurses to park when they come to visit you?

I’m looking forward to seeing what this palliative care group can do for me. The doctors involved may have good advice for how to manage my pain meds. Eventually they can hook me up to a huge bottle of morphine and I can blissfully drift off to permanent unconsciousness, but not just yet. My lab results are indicating that I’m heading toward remission so back off with the bottle of morphine!

We saw my orthopaedic surgeon yesterday and he’s ordered another CT scan of my right femur, the one with the bone excavations. He just wants to make sure the lesion isn’t getting any bigger because it has been more painful lately. So, next week I see my family doctor on Monday, then I go into the hospital on Wednesday for a visit with my local oncology GP, and to get a zoledronic acid infusion. I’ll probably get a CT scan this week too. On Thursday I go back in to start a new chemotherapy cycle, my third! Never a dull moment. Wish me luck!