Next Step

Right now I sit in the hospital bed all day with basically two areas of pain; my lower back/right hip area and my right shoulder. As most of you know, in the hospital they always ask you what your pain level is on a scale of 1-10. Well when I'm at rest in bed, both areas just stay a constant 4. If either area is moved in a major way, the pain goes to 10+.



Right Shoulder

There's a large tumor in my right shoulder. As a result, I have limited movement of my right arm. Any movement which involves my right shoulder muscle causes intense pain. Most of the time I have to use my left arm to move my right arm at all if I want to avoid any pain. It's something I've just gotten used to.



Hip/Lower Back

This area isn't too bad (4) just sitting in bed. The challenge comes when I have to sit up or get out of bed. If I sit up straight, even if it is completely assisted, my back seizes and I have to immediately lay flat to stop the seizing. So, that's just another thing to deal with.



Future Plans
Right now I'm sitting in my hospital bed relaxing both of those painful areas waiting for a bed in the SICU (Surgical Intensive Care Unit) to open up. The plan is to start me on an IV drug called Ketamine. The reason behind this is two fold. One, we're hoping it finally helps the pain. Two; all the drugs I'm on right now are opiates. Well I have built up such a tolerance to these opiates that we need some way to lower that. Well, Ketamine hits different pain receptors. So, the Ketamine should be able to control the pain by hitting different pain receptors and give the pain receptors that the opiates hit a break. By doing this, my tolerance to the opiates should drop so that when I go to leave, I can go back on opiates at much lower doses and achieve the same pain relief level. That's what we're hoping anyway. With Ketamine, I need to be in the ICU because I need to be monitored very closely. How many days will I be in the ICU on Ketamine? I have no idea.

That's the plan for now, I'll post when I get moved to the ICU.