Managing Pain

Brendan's pain has continued to increase.  Overnight it reached intolerable levels for Brendan.  

Atticus kept giving Brendan kisses to make him "all better."

 Shaun and I took turns overnight rubbing his feet, putting cold rags on his forehead and helping him focus on deep breathing.  Finally, at 3:30 a.m., we called the oncology "on call" doctor to find out what more we could do.  After lots of questions about fevers, blood count numbers, and past history of hip pain, he came up with a pain management plan.  The goal was to get on top of the pain, then stay on top of it.

 Brendan and Shaun finally got some sleep around 5 a.m.  Brendan was sleeping peacefully when I left for meetings at 7:30 a.m.  As the morning went on, Brendan's pain became uncontrolled again.  His mournful cry, his tears, his writhing in pain was (is) more than I can bear.

 All day has been a battle trying to keep his pain under control.  When he felt good, he tried to get up into the wheelchair.  That only lasted a few minutes before it hurt too much.

 Brendan tried sitting on the couch to play a game, but that hurt too much as well.

 A hot bath seems to help, so Brendan climbed in to soak a couple of times today.  This morning I had to carry him because when he tried to get up it hurt too much for him to be on his knees, then too painful to try to stand, or even move back to lying down.  Tonight Shaun had to carry him back to his bed.

The Oncology Clinic will see Brendan Monday.  There was nothing they felt they could do for him until the doctors were back in clinic.  So we will pack and prepare to go to Salt Lake -- hopefully just for the day.  But we always know to prepare for a longer stay -- just in case.

Whatever happens, we hope to have some answers as to why this is happening.  Of course, they will be looking again to see if the tumor has moved into the bone.  Osteonecrosis -- bone death -- is another thing we will be asking about.  The "bone issues" that have shown up on his scans indicate there may be tiny blood clots and areas where the bone has not been getting blood supply.  How they treat this I have no idea.  Lots of questions and no answers tonight.  Hopefully, tomorrow we will have lots of answers and no more questions.  But that has not been our experience in the past.  I don't think Brendan cares what it is so long as we can get rid of the terrible pain.