a health update

I started this blog way back in 2014, while in hospital with suspected, and then confirmed, multiple myeloma - a blood cancer that causes bone weakness among a plethora of other unpleasant symptoms.

Anyway, after nearly eight years in remission my cancer relapsed in February / March 2023, but since then I've been by and large healthy with few obvious signs that the cancer was back, let alone progressing.

But these past few weeks things have been different.  I started getting regular feelings of nausea behind my usual bouts of morning sickness and my levels of fatigue have been returning to what they were at the height of my illness all those years ago.

The worst problem though is a persistent, nagging and really quite unpleasant bone pain in my right pelvis and hip.  This in turn serves to keep me awake at night adding to my tiredness.  A vicious circle if ever there were one.

I have really strong painkillers that I can take, but these can cause more issues than they solve, mainly constipation (sorry) and out of body experiences (yes, I turn into a space cadet!).  Now, there's little I can do about the latter, but I can take extra laxatives for the former, though I'm sure you can understand where this all leads!  Sorry for any unnecessary imagery!

So, what I really need is to have the painful area x-rayed or scanned to see what the cause is, and I'll be raising this when I next speak with my consultant haematologist.

Anyway, I'm a grown up and realise I signed up for this when I refused further chemotherapy treatment so now I have to put up with things.

There we are then, a health update.  Maybe they'll become more regular if my cancer is indeed progressing.  Who knows?