[Mtngrl]

As I imagine is true for you, every time I see an NP, MD, or treatment RN I am asked if I have any pain. For many months I have been reporting pain in my back, on the right side, along the rib cage. It comes and goes, and it's usually pretty low level, but it's in the same area that hurt like the dickens when I had pneumonia last June. Since then I have also frequently reported pain in the right side of my face--tooth ache, jaw pain, ear ache. For awhile I also had a mild infection in my right eye. They said to massage it and hold warm compresses on it. (That did help.) At the end of August when I reported pain in my upper jaw they said to go to the dentist. I went, and he said my teeth were fine.

The night of December 17 I had chills and fever. It was very cold and snowy, so I decided not to call the oncologist's office, because I knew they'd tell me to come in, and I didn't want to go out in the storm. I took Ibuprofen, the fever broke, and I slept for 4 hours. Then it came back, I did the same thing, and this time the fever didn't come back. I had treatment 2 days later, and my blood counts were fine.

The Thursday before Christmas I noticed that one of my teeth hurt when I chewed. Then the pain started wandering--ear ache, jaw pain, tooth ache. I was also having that pain on the right side of my back, but more severe this time. I had to take 800 mg of Ibuprofen every 8 hours to function at all. By 12/27 I realized (a) the pain was breaking through the Ibuprofen and (b) pain is a symptom, so perhaps I should look into causes. I saw my PCP, got diagnosed with a sinus infection, and started on Augmentin.

Here's the kicker: I have radiation pneumonitis, which makes my O2 drop and my heart rate soar if I move my body at all. I'm on Prednisone for that, and it's better than it was. I test my oxygen saturation and pulse pretty frequently with one of those little devices you clip on a finger tip. Yesterday I noticed my O2 and heart rate are dramatically better. I've also quit coughing. And I can breathe deeply without triggering a coughing fit.

What if some of what was lighting up on my last PET scan was a low-grade infection in my lungs, now getting cleared up with an antibiotic? What if I hadn't gone to see my PCP? He even said that the way the sinus cavity is situated, people often get sent to a dentist first, when the real problem is a sinus infection. That happened to me--but almost 4 months went by before the infection was diagnosed and treated.

You can have more than one thing wrong with you, even with one part of your body. Symptoms can overlap. When I told my oncologist my jaw hurt she said it didn't sound like cancer. Really? I didn't say I thought it was cancer. I was answering a question. She's a doctor. She was trained to diagnose all kinds of conditions. Since I'm a cancer patient, my oncologist is, in a very real sense, my primary care provider. I wish she were a little more open to exploring other causes for my symptoms. (I have a new oncologist, and based on our one meeting so far I am hopeful that she will be.)

I didn't have fevers (except that one night), wasn't getting headaches, didn't feel especially sick, so I walked around for months with a low grade sinus infection and quite possibly chronic low grade pneumonia with no one picking up on the pattern until I finally did.

I know no one is more interested in keeping me healthy than I am, but sometimes I feel really alone in this business of living with "cancer as a chronic illness." On the other hand, all's well that ends well.

Anybody else? Have you had health issues that may have been missed, by you or your providers, because we mostly just think in terms of direct effects of cancer?