Dropping in for a visit

I haven't blogged in a while. Not that there is nothing to talk about, I am just out a lot more and doing things. When I can. I am going through another phase right now that nobody tells you about. It is called "panc coming back" and it is a blood sugar roller coaster ride. It goes like this; get your really high blood sugar reading, take some 70/30 insulin, get a blood sugar low, drink some orange juice, get a bizarre blood sugar reading, then feel like crap for two days. One day I woke up with a blood sugar reading near 500. The day before it was near normal, I mean really normal, like 115. Two days before that I had taken some insulin when my blood sugars were 190 or so. Twenty minutes later I was in a sugar low dive and desperate to level out and come back. That's pretty much it in a nutshell. It happens every few days. In between episodes I can feel really bad or okay. Random chance near as I can tell. Today is good. Friday not so much.

Another weird side effect is back aches. Real monster, nauseating backaches that destroyed any hope of sleeping. And they only happened at night. I was fine all day long, tired maybe but no backache. Then I would sit down in my easy chair at night or try to go to bed and the aches would come like a wave of misery, so deep and all consuming that I would end up vomiting. My first solution was to curl up in the fetal position to stretch the back muscles. That helped but it did not solve the problem. I went to a couple of chiropractors and they manipulated my back and neck and hips. Snap crackle pop, throwing bones down a flight of stairs it sounded like. A couple days later it would all came back, pain, nausea, vomiting. Finally one night I was out on my deck where I keep a weight bar loaded with some 70 pounds of weights. I used to work out with them before I got sick. I tried the rifle man's lift, the weights held overhead and lowered behind my head, raised and lowered several times. That hit most of the offending muscle group and my back. In five minutes I had worked out most of the pain and I was on the road to recovery. I have since worked a few more exercises in that finish off the area and the back pain has all but subsided. I actually sleep like a baby at night now. For a few hours anyway, I'm still a cancer/chemo patient even though it has been over a year since my last chemo and they haven't found any cancer in me since my operation. The effects of the cancer trauma are very long lasting.

Then there is the discovery of the protein shake drinks. Great stuff, already mixed, get your protein all ready to go. I tried them. Everything has side effects, no exception here. I started sleeping like a baby. No, not real sound, dead sleep at night; no, I needed a nap every few hours. I would fall asleep like a baby would, I would go from wide awake to droopy eyed and dead mentally and physically in a few minutes. I'd drag myself to bed, sleep for an hour and wake up refreshed then rinse and repeat. But I noticed that my muscles were different, they were growing. All that protein and my muscles were taking it in like candy. I woke up and actually discovered I had chest muscles again. They seem to be growing without really working them out. And my arm muscles as well. I even put on 5 pounds, after continuously losing weight over the months since coming home from New York I was gaining weight. So many changes, so many mysteries to solve and live through.

I talked to a friend I met in the hospital yesterday. I hadn't called him for quite a while because it was very difficult for me to deal with the problems of other people, I just didn't have the emotional strength to deal with what could be bad news. He was in for his third pancreatic cancer operation when I met him. First the original pancreatic cancer and they operated and removed half his panc, then the cancer spread to his lung so they took part of his lung, then it came back in his panc and they removed the last of it. Last I had heard he was scared that he was losing weight so fast that he was going to die. So I called finally and talked to him. He is fine, but he weighs 130 pounds. I told him about the protein drinks and he is really anxious to try them. He also is having back pains. I told him my solution, maybe it will work for him as well. I hope so.

I have more to talk about but I am done for today.