I have been thinking a lot about my cancer and pain this week.  A friend of mine died in hospice on Monday.  She had been battling stage IV colon cancer for 2 1/2 years.  Her cancer journey started and ended with pain, although I hope she had relief from the morphine in those last few days.  I feel as though pain is the thing that my cancer will use to beat me. 

My pain has been gradually increasing.  My neck, more than anything else, but also my mid and low back, my hip and my belly.  I am now taking 600 mg of Ibuproefen every 8 hours and this keeps it manageable, but it was manageable on 400 mg every 12 hours just a week ago.  I don’t really worry that the pain can’t be controlled.  I worry about what pain control means for everything else in my life.  I worry that I will not be able to drive or work once I require daytime doses of narcotics for pain control. 

My family and I are much luckier than so many facing cancer and its treatment.  I have very good health insurance and access to world class health care.  I have long term disability insurance and life insurance for my husband and children.  But if I have to be out of work for more than 16 weeks before this cancer does me in my husband will take a very significant financial hit and I have been trying to choreograph this dance to allow me to continue doing everything I do in my life until it can be reliably predicted that I have less than those 4 months to live.  Pain, or rather pain CONTROL, is the one thing that can mess that up in a very big way. 

Cancer is such an awful disease.  It often leaves even the well-employed and well-insured destitute by robbing them of their ability to work.  Some continue to work to maintain those benefits when they might be better off spending that energy on trying to survive.  And those aren’t even the direct effects of the cancer - pain, fatigue, nausea, etc., etc., etc.

To be completely honest, the increasing pain of the last week has finally struck fear into my heart.  I am afraid of uncontrollable pain.  I am afraid that this is signalling the first incline of the slippery slope that will lead to my cancer controlling my life and my family for too long.  I am afraid for those who love me and don’t want to see me in pain.  I am just plain scared.