Chemo +1, Drugs, More Ranting

It's strange to be back here again -- in chemo land, and my reintroduction to the infusion center yesterday was emotional and hard.

Yet again, I get snubbed by the Breast Cancer Army. In the middle of my treatment I see a woman come in to the infusion center with her head (clearly shaved) covered with a hanky (I'm sure there's a better term for this but this is all I can come up with at the moment). She has three proud female trends with her. I'm in an otherwise abandoned row with my mom and brother. They take one look at me, notice my lack of breast-cancer-ness and lack of female-ness, and move on to another, much more crowded, row. I'm not exactly sure why this is, but all of the breast cancer survivors I've met in the infusion center (and, to be fair, more so their friends who accompany them to treatments) are very snobbish an appear (for some reason) actively anti-male. I realize that breast cancer is a female phenomenon, but the most important part of this is *cancer*, which does not discriminate based on gender. I have said this before, but I feel the burden of having an odd and obscure cancer that is not one of the "popular" cancers and does not have bumperstickers, ribbons, walks, keychains, coffee mugs, etc. Maybe I am just overly sensitive, but it only serves to make me feel more alone.

My back pain has been my major compliant and has been getting worse of late. The only time I've found total relief from it is to quadruple my prescribed dose of oxycodone. Whichbmeans im taking 10mg Oxycodone and 650mg acetominophen every 2 hours. I have only done this 3 times, as an experiment to seen if it would make it go away. This makes me worried about eventual addiction, as you can imagine. Dr. Grampa, the oncologist, ramped up the painkiller to a Fentanyl patch (12 mcg/h). This is like a nicotine patch (I assume) and is a small clear patch that goes on the skin and dispenses a controlled dose over 72 hours. I put it on yesterday afternoon and its working now. I take this with my oxycodone, but at least now I don't need to exceed my prescribed amount. I'm still flooding my body with opioids, of course. Another down side of this is that I cannot safely/legally drive until I am off of these, which may be a few weeks. Dr. Grampa believes that it may be the tumor causing the pain, and if that is the case the only hope of fixing the problem (as opposed to simply covering it up) is through chemo, which will (or should, anyhow) shrink the tumor.
Right now I'm just overjoyed that my back is only slightly sore--as opposed to a constant, all-consuming knife-blade in my lower back) so the chemo side-effects (low level nausea, lack of appetite, tiredness and deadened taste buds) are minor.

The opioids make me clumsy and liable to drop things, but I'm not a juggler so that's not much of a loss at the moment.

My spirits are returning with the decrease in pain. Let's hope that the lack of pain and good spirits are a trend and not just an anomaly.