I was reading again. Sorry. Then I started thinking. Sorry, I know I shouldn't. Sometimes news articles are enlightening, sometimes it makes you mad, sometimes its humorous and sometimes they make you say 'doh, I knew that'. This article is clearly in the category of 'doh'. Breast cancer patients feel pain for years after.
I could have written it (but wouldn't have all the fancy references they have). They are talking about pain related to the surgery and basically the treated areas - breast, underarm, etc. Yes, I get those pains too. Sometimes I wonder why I can have pain from anything because of my back pain meds but I do. My ankle hurts - especially after PT bends it a 1000 different directions. My underarm hurts - I don't know why but it seems to be worse now than before. But I will ask the doctor about that next week.
Anyway, back to the article that I could have written. If you think about it, it makes sense. They do some surgery and dig around inside your lymph nodes (which are nice and deep). Then they give you chemo which messes up cell growth. Then they use radiation to chase down the cancer cooties hanging out in the area. And you wonder why it hurts afterwards? Now I don't mean massive pain here. I mean spontaneous pain - where you are sitting still and all of a sudden you get a sharp pain or tingling, or why did you do that pain - when you attempt to drink a glass of water or raise your arm and it reminds you not to, or you slept wrong pain - where you wake up because you did something silly while sleeping and it hurts. And not a level 10 pain either but a level 2-5 on a scale of 1-10 pain.
So I read the article and will talk to my doctor and be told that its normal for some women to have this kind of pain and basically that its one of those little joys from cancer that we just get to suck it up and deal with. Boy am I cynical this morning. Perhaps I got up too early. Too bad I can't go back to bed. I'll just rein in my cynicism and attempt to be a normal human for the day.
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