Trocar, please

This here folks, is commonly known as a "Red Devil Trocar"...... If you have spent any time on a farm with bovines that have issues with bloat that need to have something like this used on them to "relieve-that-bloat-or-die",  you know what it is.

Scott says that is already too much information.  

It's what I woke up dreaming about the other night.

During my recent appointment with my favorite oncologist, we were discussing the new experimental drug and it's side effects that have been popping up with myself - and the others it appears as well.  All eight of us now. 

I told her my biggest complaint with the Ro from Day -1 , has been bloat.

I realize this is a sensitive subject of sorts, but I'm here to tell you it ain't pretty on this side of computer either......

On any given day, I can wake up, put on a pair of my favorite stretchy pants - and within an hour need to switch to something two sizes bigger.  I am not kidding.  And we are talking stretchy-pants -- I can count on two thumbs the total number of days I have been able to wear pants with a zipper since January 10th.

This bloat seems to concentrate itself mostly on Fridays and Sundays, but can pop up on any given day at any given hour.  The worst one was on a Tuesday after a "workout" - which is traditionally my best day of the week - and I thought I really might die.  One minute I am lifting 3 pound weights over my head after a good walk and two bottles of water; the next minute  I was two numbers away from calling my local ER and asking if humans could - medically speaking - flip their stomachs like cows. 

It has been an ongoing problem that I thought maybe we could finally definitively say was a direct result of the experimental drug, and deal with it.  Please. 

We weeded out the difference between steroid bloat and this bloat.  We narrowed down the most painful area - the whole band across my upper abdomen - in fact I think my liver, pancreas, stomach and spleen gave written notice last week of walking off the job soon. 

They seem notably angry. 

We checked my kidney enzymes, which looked ok.  My liver enzymes are a bit low, but that is "usual" for chemo. 

It appears to be one of a few things - where the top of my colon transverses across the bottom of my rib cage; or the valve that empties the stomach; or just a hole in the stomach itself developing.  I keep raising my hand and saying "spleen?" because most of the intense pain is at the bottom of my left rib cage - but she doesn't think so. 

During the appointment after I explained it all to her again, I looked at her pleadingly, needing to know what to do.  It hurts sometimes and some days to where I can not sit down.  Some days I want to just flat out moan like the bloated cows and beg for a trocar - I feel their pain.

She looked at me, smiled, and said "what do you do?" 

Alrighty.  I'm catching on here, albeit a bit slowly.

I told her I will never, ever drink a bottle of water after a workout again in my life - I sip it now.  I told her I do not / cannot eat a lot at night as that is when it seems worse.  I told her I take 3 different over the counter meds that we had previously talked about to try and combat it. 

I mean we have been treating these symptoms by trial and error, but it was time now for my doctor to tell me how to take care of it. That's how I felt walking into the appointment at least - hope was fading fast.

She looked at me and said "we don't know why this is happening, we are looking into this".   Then she continued - "please, please write down when this happens and what you have done before and after, and then what you did to treat it".......  

I'm thinking my big contribution to science may well end up being my introduction of the "red devil trocar" to my oncologists at the OSU James Cancer Center.