Bad Pain -- it's a Good Thing!

Sorry for the slow posting about my stay here at the clinic. A lot of times the days are long here: I have six separate treatments every day, and then there's our three vegetarian sit-down meals, and the three juices in between meals.

But honestly, most of my time the last few days has been taken up with dealing with the pain of the therapies. Each one of them is intended to produce an inflammatory response in order to attack the tumors. And believe me, I am getting these inflammatory responses in spades! Unpredictably throughout the day, I'm getting intense pain in one of several areas around the tumors -- but mostly in my pelvis, where my tumors are concentrated. These waves of pain knock my socks off for a few hours at a time, and I have to stop whatever I'm doing and lie in bed. (although it's difficult to take weight off of my pelvis no matter how I twist and turn!)

This is actually a very good sign, as it means that the treatments are being effective against the cancer. I can stop the pain completely for a day by not doing any treatments for that day -- but then, that defeats the whole purpose of why I'm down here, doesn't it? So since I want to keep moving ahead with the treatments, the clinic has several (non-opiate) painkillers that I can use. The best has been a treatment that Dr. Tony has administered the past few days: pulsed light flashes to the acupuncture points for pain relief in my ear. The last few nights I've been able to sleep soundly, without intense pain. It's made the whole treatment process much more manageable, even allowing me to make a few blog posts!