I had the bi-weekly follow up with the doctor on Friday. All blood values are good except AFOS (one of the liver values) was a bit high at 324. The normal range is 35-105. It has come down a lot since the bile duct operation last month though when it was measured at 649 (on January 2nd). The doctor said this is all good.
The back and hip pains are from time to time still bad and the doctor increased the painkiller dosages. She also prescribed me a new drug used for neuropathic pains and anxiety. It should also make me tired and help with my sleeping problems. They finally managed to schedule the MRI picture and I'll get that done on Thursday this week. Then they'll call me up next week to inform me about the results and see if they could use some radiation treatment on some tumours to ease the pains.
The biggest challenge right now is insomnia. I just can't fall asleep at nights or if I do I wake up shortly afterwards! Very frustrating and something I've never even remotely experienced before. We have discussed this with the doctor several times already. She has prescribed various sleeping pills that I've tried out, but they have unfortunately not helped very much. The back and hip pains could be part of the problem since I sometimes have had to take more pain killers during the night. Maybe the cancer has an impact on some hormone level? We've also discussed if the reason could be mental, in other words thoughts and fear of dying but it's not that either, I'm not going through anything like that at the moment.
This weekend (Friday and Saturday nights) was exceptionally bad. The increased pain killer dose helped take away the back pains but I still couldn't fall asleep or if I did I would wake up after half an hour. I felt like a walking zombie during daytime especially afternoons and evenings. We did manage to meet up with some friends on Saturday though and that went fine. We placed the kids at grand-parents and had lunch at a restaurant downtown.
Last night (Sunday) I finally got some sleep! I slept for 4,5 hours, then half and hour awake, and then I slept for another 1,5 hours. Today (Monday) I've felt great and even brought and fetched the kids from day care. I haven't done that in a long time. Hopefully my sleeping will continue like this.
The birthday celebration season isn't over after all. The oldest kid came down with a stomach flu on his birthday and we had to postpone the party. Luckily the new time was ok for all, including the magician. Marjo also got the same stomach flu while the youngest guy and I managed to avoid it. Poor kid, he was very anxious the birthday party would get cancelled but we assured him it'll will be fine to tell everyone it is postponed by a week. That means the party is tomorrow but now it seems many of his friends have come down with something and have cancelled. There are quite a few flus going around in schools and day cares these days. Let's see how many will show up.
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