My surgery is 3 weeks from today. Next Tuesday I’ll be seeing my radiation oncologist for a follow-up and then my primary care doctor for a surgical clearance. I’ve been compiling a list of things to tell them:
I’m noticing pain coming back. It’s not too bad but it’s noticeable, and it’s the same pain that I had before I was diagnosed. It’s a dull ache deep inside the pelvic area as if radiating toward my left-side perineum and tail bone areas. And it gets more painful the longer I sit.
I am definitely feeling the fatigue that they warned me about. It hits me all of a sudden to where I’m just so tired and worn out it feels like I can hardly move, and all I want to do is lie down and close my eyes.
Dr. Kemmis had said the radiation might make me go into early menopause and I think that’s exactly what’s happening to me. I’ve been having the hot flashes for about three weeks now. I call them heat waves! It’s the weirdest thing. All of a sudden I feel my body become warmer, and warmer, and warmer. It just grows like that in the span of about 10 seconds and then I’m so hot for a good 10 minutes or so. Then it just stops and suddenly I’m shivering. At first it was only occurring once a night. Then a couple times a night. Now it’s several times a night and starting to happen during the day too.
Last Wednesday I started feeling a rocking sensation. Not dizziness or spinning, just the feeling as if I were rocking and a little floating. And sometimes at night I wake up from another heat wave and then on the cool down I start feeling the rocking sensation, and then a feeling like I might faint, where the back of my head feels like I’m falling. It passes after a couple minutes.
Two days ago I started having some vaginal discharge. The nurse warned me that might happen. Well, it’s definitely happening. I noticed some “drops” of wetness in my undies but didn’t think too much about it. Then this morning when I got out of bed and was heading to the bathroom to get into the shower, something was running down my leg! No kidding, that’s how much this discharge was. I’d call it drainage! It didn’t feel like I was peeing, it just felt like water running down my leg. A perfect analogy is that it’s exactly like when my water broke when I was pregnant, except in that case it was a LOT more water. My husband kept telling me to hold it in because I was getting water all over the bed and the carpet. I told him there wasn’t any way for me to hold it in because there wasn’t anything I could clench to do that.
That’s what I mean. Tightening my bladder muscles didn’t hold it in. That’s why I don’t think it’s urine. I just don’t know what it is. I’m assuming it’s just water from my vagina, probably kind of like the water inside of a blister. Maybe the radiation caused a bunch of blisters that are now peeling and draining out all the water?? I’m just guessing here. I will definitely ask the radiation doc.
I went to work wearing a maxi pad and fortunately didn’t have the drainage as intense as it was this morning. On a break at work today I walked over to the Radiation Oncology department and asked if I could go back and talk to one of the nurses about some of my symptoms. They said sure and sent me back.
I said to the nurse, “So you said I might start having some vaginal discharge. Could you tell me what that’s supposed to be like?” She said it would be thin and watery but could have some gel-like substance mixed in, could be a little or a lot, maybe a slight yellow tinge, and could have a foul odor. I said, “Well that’s exactly what I have except for the odor, thank goodness. I thought maybe it was urine leakage but it doesn’t smell like urine. It doesn’t smell like anything.” She said it was just a normal side effect and that it would probably start to lessen and stop in the next few days. She told me to wear a pad and try to determine how much fluid I think is coming out and if it increases.
I was glad to hear it was normal and that it should stop soon. “So you're sure it’s not coming from my bladder? She said, “It’s not from the bladder, it’s vaginal. This is just something that happens, and it should stop soon. But keep an eye on it if it becomes a lot and let us know if it does. Check yourself for a fever which would be a sign of an infection.” So, it’s kind of bothersome to have all this drainage, but the good news is it’s not due to a damaged bladder!
Yuck either way. It’s so much wetness. I've been running to the restroom all day. I sure hope it stops soon.
When I started doing this blog to document my cancer it was a way for me to cope with the cancer and the changes since I didn’t know how bad it would get, but also a way to give detailed reporting to other new cancer patients who might be looking on the Internet for other people’s experiences. So again, this is why I’m giving details. No point in pretending. I believe in telling it like it is.
So now let’s segue to my next symptom. My period is about 12 days late. When I spoke to the nurse today and mentioned this she said the same thing that Dr. Witta had told me a couple weeks ago, that where the radiation was targeted it should not have reached my ovaries. So I told her that’s what the oncologist had said but that Dr. Kemmis (the radiation oncologist) had said that the radiation would very likely cause me to go into early menopause. She was a little surprised and said, “Oh he said that? Well then maybe that’s what’s happening. But you’ll have to wait and see. It could be possible that this is either your last period or that it’s just a temporary effect and you might get a period later on again.”
Great. I was really starting to enjoy the notion that I wouldn’t be having any more periods! Well, I’ll mention it to Dr. Kemmis next week and see what he thinks. I know that no one knows for sure and that I’ll just have to wait and see.
Let’s see, what else is on that list. Oh, I started having both a dull and a sharp pain in my right side this morning. I’d say it’s around the right ureter area. And then later I started having a dull ache around both my kidneys. Definitely worth mentioning. I’m still trying to remember to drink more water so I stay hydrated.
My fingers are doing much better, but they are still peeling and the third ends of all my fingers are smooth and still a bit swollen. It’s like I have no grip, no tread. Like, it’s nearly impossible to flick through papers or even turn a page in a book. I have such little feeling in them too.
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