Monday, December 18, 2006

The return of the pain

Well, the pain is back. It had gone away for a while - so much so that I was wondering why I was still taking my pain pills - but it's back with a vengeance. Sigh. The sternum is hurting quite a lot and the pain has been getting steadily worse.

I also have another spot that's been aching for a few weeks now on the back of my left thigh. It hurts in one spot, and if I press really hard on that spot, the pain flares up like crazy (just like my sternum). It also aches if I'm sitting a long time, particularly if I'm driving. I don't think that it's a pulled muscle. When I have a pulled muscle, it hurts along the entire muscle (one spot tends to hurt more than others but the whole muscle will ache, especially when I poke at it), and none of the muscles on the back of my thigh ache that way. I don't think that it's just a stiff muscle, either, because it neither hurts nor feels better to stretch the hamstring or glutes.

I'd heard that the pain from the mets would increase once the treatment started working. I suspect that the spot might be a met on the thigh that was just too small to see on the scans (bone scans apparently don't pick up anything less than 0.5cm) and now it hurts like the sternum because the treatment is working. It could also be that the Femara is causing this - Femara causes joint and muscle pain, so it's possible that the pain is either transferred from my hip or knee or is just plain Femara pain.

I've been watching this spot on my leg carefully and recording the pain I'm experiencing in my sternum and this spot. If it continues to hurt, then I'll call my oncologist in January. I'm not terribly worried about it - I don't think that they would change my treatment even if it is mets - but at some point I'm going to want to know whether or not I have more mets.

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