Slow + Painful Recovery 🥺

Hi, everyone. So sorry for the delayed update — it's been a challenging week. Paul's definitely suffering quite a bit. Managing, but suffering 🥺.

Some of you may have seen a VERY RARE and honest emotional dump from Paul the other night. I was shocked to see it myself, so that only goes to show what a toll this procedure (and his cancer as a whole) has been taking on him.

We can’t say we weren’t warned that this would be a rough recovery. His surgeon did tell us the pain would be equivalent to or worse than natural child birth and kidney stones, and would last a lot longer. I think (sadly), since Paul has experienced an unfortunate amount of pain in the last few years, we both kinda thought he’d get through this a bit on the ‘easier’ side. No such luck.

His surgeon told me ended up tackling a LOT of his tumor burden this round (probably 10+ tumors, if I had to guess?) — so she expected his pain to be proportionate to the intensity of the procedure.

I called the nurse to ask if it is concerning to have this much pain six days post-op (consistent pain with zero improvement). She said it's very common, and can last up to two weeks for some patients. As long as the pain isn’t getting worse or changing location, etc., it’s ‘normal’ and unfortunately expected.

Please don’t get me wrong — he is not curled up in a ball on the floor in the type of pain he was in when his gallbladder was exploding in October… it’s not an unbearable 'take me from this earth' kinda pain. But it’s intense, it’s keeping him down for the count, and it’s pretty much nonstop. Just wavers from a 3-8 out of 10 throughout the day.

This poor guy despises being on opioids. (Can't personally wrap my head around that one 🙃😬!) He is taking them as directed out of necessity, but he can’t stand the way they make him feel (other than the semi-relief of pain), and he just wants to get back to functioning. (Most of you know what a workaholic he is — it absolutely kills him to be like this. Sometimes I think the fatigue and inability to work/function kills him mentally even more than the pain does physically.)

He’ll get a quick burst or two of trying to pummel through some work calls/messages, put out some fires… sounding and acting semi-like himself for a very short period of time… then just collapses back into bed/couch, defeated and miserable. He’s currently in bed with a migraine on top of everything else. (How a migraine can even poke through these pain meds is beyond my comprehension. And the fact that the universe can give him a migraine on top of all of this just feels like pure evil.)

If this procedure helps, then this will of course hopefully all have been worth it. We won’t know until we get results from his December 29^th scan if his tumors responded to it. Fingers, toes and all the things crossed that this was all for a reason.

I can't believe he has to go through this all over again in three weeks 🥺. Although... keeping the next procedure on schedule as planned would mean this procedure was successful. — So in a sad way, I guess we have to hope/wish that he DOES have to go through this again in January.

P.S. Not surprisingly, all the nurses loved him. They especially loved the 'ball show' they got when he was coming out of anesthesia 🍊🍊. His sister… not so much 🤣.

P.S.S. If MSK monitors/tracks the amount of times I have refreshed his portal looking to see if his biopsy results are in... it’s possible they might have me committed 🙃.

Will update soon. Thanks, as always, for all of the messages, check-ins and support. 💕.

(The shape of his Emotional Support 'Positive Poo' doll is pretty indicative of the shape of Paul right now... the eyes look eerily similar. 👀 )

(The shape of his Emotional Support 'Positive Poo' doll is pretty indicative of the shape of Paul right now... the eyes look eerily similar. 👀 )