recovering

for the past 3 days, i think my overall condition is slowly improving. i used the word overall, becos certain part of the body seems to get worse. it took me sometime to confirm that my worst time is over, now i'm recovering.

the best improvement is of course the number of hours that i'm able to sleep. with sufficient sleep, it helps in the overall recovery. my pain score dropped drastically. two days ago, i was still getting sharp pain every one or two hours. now, i'm getting it like once or twice, at most thrice a day. becos of that, today i only took 2 paracetamol, and one 5ml spoonful of morphine.

i tried to stop the anaesthetic gel but i couldn't. the only part of my body that isn't improving is the throat. it seems to get more and more painful over the past few days. otherwise i'm quite confident my tongue can do away with the anaesthetic gel.

my burned neck looks horrible, but it's also recovering. the wound dried up pretty fast and the clots were peeling off automatically.

in fact based on my overall "performance", i'm quite confident that by 15th aug, i should be able to go back to work, do some short runs, eat some solid food etc.

psychological change

i kept mentioning that psychologically i'm not alright, but so far i didn't mention what really happened in me that makes me come to this conclusion. last night, i finally talked to my wife regarding this and we'd come to the decision that if this continues for a month or two, i'll seek help from a psychiatrist.

so what happened so seriously that i think i need to see a psychiatrist? remember the MRI experience i had somewhere in May? you can read it if u don't. http://bluesky-mg.blogspot.com/2010/05/anxiety-disorder.html

there's one thing i must emphasize, before i got contacted with this stupid big C, i was perfectly alright. when i was a boy, i always like to hide myself in the cupboard, under the bed, the better concealment, the more secure i feel. i had no problem with complete darkness or enclosure.

but now, the problem has degenerated so much. when i woke up in the middle of the night, i need to put the light on. if not it would took me less than 5 minutes to feel suffocated, than the next thing i'll do is to dash to the window to catch my breathe, as if my head was immersed in water.

this is still not so bad, as i'd made an agreement with my wife that if i turned on the light in the middle of the night, just ignore me as i don't want to stress myself into sleeping.

nowadays my body gets cold very easily. my bathroom has got a small ventilation window. i wish i could shower with the window closed, but i couldn't. the moment i closed the window, the whole bathroom is enclosed, and i started to feel suffocated. ok, this is still quite private. the next one is going to affect my social life, definitely.

since i'm now much weaker than before, my wife and i always take taxi to and fro the hospital. guess what, the moment the cab door was closed, i started to feel discomfort. despite the air-con is blowing, the interior of the taxi is big enough for me to move around, the only thing i can do is to close my eyes, head down and hands together to prevent myself from winding down the window.

i think i had developed rather serious claustrophobia over this period of time. the causes could be due to all the scanning and the radiation therapy. these could hv physically worsen the situation. another possible cause could be due to the illness itself, ie. CANCER. ever since i was diagnosed with this, everything is beyond my control, the only things i'd been doing r follow instructions, don't give up, endure. as a cancer patient, i lost all the freedom to choose (unless i choose to die). my life was being confined to that of a cancer patient. i'd been confined for far too long and i refused to confront the feeling as i worried i might just break down. that's how it resulted to my condition now.

whatever it is, i hope this thing will go away before i returned to normal daily life. if not, i'll seek treatment. since i'd gone thru cancer treatment, what is claustrophobia, right?

best medicine

yesterday when i see Dr. DL, i told him abt that special pain in the nerve which occurs from the tongue/throat all the way to the head/ear. he prescribed me with gabapentin which is suppose to be a pain killer for the nerve. i also asked for more lidocaine as i need it for food intake.

before i gone to bed, i took some morphine and the gabapentin. then kept my finger crossed, hoping for a better night. i slept at 1am, woke up at 3am, had a sip of water, realised that it wasn't that painful like before, i continued to sleep, i woke up at 6am, had another sip of water and was happy that i could actually continue to sleep!! i stacked the pilllow, half lying on bed half leaning on wall for another hour, i had the best night for the past 3 weeks (or maybe longer?).

due to the lack of sleep, i'd been experiencing aches all over the body. arms, shoulders, back. my body had become very rigid, and my engine had been burning extra hard to keep it going. suddenly i got a full 7-hour of sleep, this is the best medicine for my conditions now.

after the sleep, i felt so much better (or could it be due to the turning point?). at least i'm totally refresh now. my breakfast taste better too. it boosted my confidence in fighting for recovery. 2 weeks, my target is to get fully recovered (from the side effects) in 2 weeks time.