Life is not fair

I’ve been having bad insomnia (bad, as in sleeping two hours, then waking up and not sleeping again until 5.30) since Saturday evening. Sunday I felt okay, just tired. But Monday and Tuesday I felt washed out completely: spinning head, some very mild vertigo, tiredness, etc. I tried using sleeping pills (Zopiclone) last night, and I woke up at 4.30, rather than 12.30, but I still feel like death. My stomach also hurts all the time.

So. It could be I’ve picked up some kind of infection; I’ve been sneezing as well, and my body temperature has been fluctating, shivering cold one moment, sweating the next. That would be the good option.

The other option is that the cancer has woken up and started growing again, and that these are the first symptoms of brain inflammation. I have a scan next Thursday, and a clinic appointment a week after that, so I’ll know then.

In the meantime, I’m going to go for a long run (warmly wrapped up), and see what I feel like after that.

Following on from last week’s post. The headaches got worse and worse, and then I started getting double vision, muscle weakness in my legs, and some confusion. On Wednesday, while on the phone to my Mum, I fainted in my kitchen. After I called the hospital, they asked me to come in for clinic on Thursday.

In the clinic, I was given a neurological examination, then the oncologist said “we need to scan your brain.” The scan couldn’t be done same day, so I had to come back in on Friday morning for an MRI scan on my brain. As soon as the tech had finished the scan, she said “Dr X wants to speak to you in outpatients,” and that’s when I started worrying. Read the rest of this entry »

Went in to see the melanoma unit at the Royal Marsden yesterday. Short version: it’s ‘highly unlikely’ that the headaches and other symptoms come from a brain metastasis. No CT scan now, but one scheduled for three months time. Read the rest of this entry »

In April I was working out when I noticed a lump in my groin. I thought at first I’d given myself a hernia during the workout (I’d been doing some very heavy lifts, so it wasn’t a completely stupid thought). I went to see a doctor at the same hospital, who felt around and said it wasn’t a hernia (wrong place, too hard). He thought it was an enlarged lymph node, and said I should wait and see if it went down.

I waited a week, and it didn’t go down. SO I went to see him again. He then said I needed a biopsy to find out what it was. I asked him if it could be cancer, and he said “from what primary?” (Tumours in the lymph nodes are secondary, or new tumours caused by cancer cells splitting off the main mass and growing somewhere else in the body). I pointed out that I’d been biopsied for melanoma, and he waved his hand and pointed to the pathology result in my file. “Look,” he said, pointing to a line in the report, ”it says benign features. So it’s not melanoma.”

Apparently the possibility of the pathologist being wrong had never occured to him. Read the rest of this entry »