Lying awake at 4 am squeezing Grant’s hand praying for the pain to stop, waiting for the pain killers to work. This is the side of cancer we often do not see or want to think about. It is these moments that make us question everything, cause while that pain is not permanent while it lasts it feels like ages.

The pain has been manageable until about the last 3 months where the intensity crept in. It surprises you as it comes and goes, I can however say it is more frequent than before. My side hurts, my shoulder hurts due to the liver being connected to a nerve in your shoulder, my tummy aches or I am exhausted, sometime these pains are isolated sometimes I experience them all together it varies.

This is the reality of cancer, apart from all the treatments and the side effects they bring the cancer itself also brings pain. The only solution in my situation is to manage it with pain killers, lots and lots of painkillers. I have my own medicine tub and thanks to my very diligent personal pharmacist (aka Grant), he makes sure I take the right tablets and everything on time as is needed.

Beginning of 2024 as the pain was worsening my oncologist advised it is the liver lesions referring the pain to other parts of my body like my shoulder and back etc. We did a new base line scan in January and the results were positive, no new brain lesions, and all liver, lung and breast lesions had not grown. Yet for me the pain was increasing.

Late February one evening the pain became so excruciating Grant took me to the emergency room. The Dr on call was thankfully extremely thorough and insisted on a sonar. Low and behold she discovered I have gall stones, which can only be seen on an ultrasound. Honestly to anyone who has ever had gall stones I give you the biggest respect, the pain is unbearable. The sad reality is other than give you pain meds there is not much that can be done and in all honesty the pain meds for some reason do not take that gall pain away, my other pain was dampened but that gall pain stays constant. If the gall pain does not subside or keeps reoccurring your only other option is to get your gall bladder removed.

This is where I ended up 12 March, in hospital having my gall bladder removed. I am sure I not alone in the world, but I am not a fan of surgery. I will admit though the relief and the reduction of pain the surgery bought, was worth with it, I still feel pain but nowhere near as excruciating as it was. The sad outcome is that the surgeon doing the surgery confirmed that he saw lesions on my abdomen wall, another difficult thing for CT scans to see. We are not sure how long the lesions have been there, but they are there. Following the surgery, I am still experiencing liver, back and shoulder pain but nowhere as intense as it was, so we continue adjusting my meds to manage the pain.