Back (Back): Just returned last night from another quick trip to NIH. More on that in a bit, but first an explanation for the blog silence.

I've been experiencing increasingly severe pain in the upper left side of my back during the last four weeks or so. It's not the first time I've hurt my back; there was an incident over the summer when I strained it, but it cleared up fairly quickly with rest and the usual home remedies. I tried the same approach this time, but hadn't been able to get any sort of relief. So something different was going on; I was hoping it was a minor thing and not a signal of something more sinister.

Initially, I was attributing the pain to the mental stress of the last few months and some atypical physical exertion, symptoms that would normally decrease after time. However, after about a week of trying to take it easy, the pain was increasing; a constant, intense yet dull ache with occasional stabbing sensations. It hurt like a mother__ to the point where I found myself groaning from the pain nearly all night, every night (it's worse when I lie down). For the most part, pain medication helped only a little; it's true that the dosage I was given wasn't very big, but I should have gotten more relief than I was getting. I'm told that I have a high resistance to pain; I don't know if I agree with that assessment, but these last few weeks have been extremely nerve-wracking. I've never experienced having so much pain for so long a period of time.

Naturally, I wanted symptoms like this checked out. So this began a merry-go-'round of doctor visits for a couple of weeks, including a trip to urgent care one morning when I believed that the pain was going to drive me absolutely nuts.

The few local docs I saw about this problem either had the "wait and see" viewpoint or told me after a cursory check said that it's likely my cancer had spread to my spine, bones, etc. [I fairly loathe that tone of voice some medicos use when they're talking to you about "serious matters": a halting concern (which I believe is genuine) mixed with a bit of condescension, almost as if they don't think you could possibly understand the gravity of what they're saying to you. It would almost be better if they came right out and say, "I'm sorry to tell you this, Mr. Whelan, but you're going to die soon." I heard this tone from a couple of different docs during this misadventure.]

Remember my phone conversation a couple of months ago with Family Friend? Some of their tales were brought to the front of my mind again (especially since FF told me that one of the cancer patients they knew had tumors all over their back). Intense pain from which I couldn't get relief, sleep deprivation, thoughts of cancer spreading rapidly through my body...I wasn't exactly in a talkative mood.

Slightly before this episode started, the team at NIH scheduled to have me come out for a post-surgery follow-up visit, including a CT. Unfortunately, this delayed finding out whether I had further metastasis until then; I'd tell the local docs about my impending visit, so none of them was going to order a CT for me to find out definitively before then. So there was a window of time, about two weeks, of mental and physical torture, with my local physician grudgingly doling out pain medication to me.

Wrapping up this much-too-long post...it's not cancer, which is a huge relief. I see a physical therapist tomorrow to help determine what the cause truly is (I have my suspicions), but until then, I've been prescribed some decent pain meds. I actually had four hours of interrupted sleep last night, which I haven't had in about a month.

Regarding the NIH visit, I learned that the immunotherapy team is in the final stages of determining which lymphocytes would be best to use against the various cell mutations (there are a number of variances in both the lymphocytes and the cancer cells, and they test them all). They hope to finish this up soon, with the intent of having me return to NIH in a few weeks for the big treatment (five days of chemotherapy following by lymphocyte injection, then about two weeks of observation). Looking forward to the next step...