Vince's Journey

And I've been making a lot of water over the past 24 hours. So as I sit hear preparing myself for my next painful trip to the bathroom I thought I'd try to get out an update on the most recent developments in 'Vince vs Lymphoma, Part III'. Perhaps this will take my mind off the constant desire to 'go make water'. Yesterday's procedure to place a stent into my ureter was, by all accounts, a success. Everything looked healthy and the node was not as pressing against the kidney as they thought. Unfortunately the side effects of this procedure include a constant urge to 'make water' with minimal results. In addition what little that does come out is accompanied by excruciatingly painful spasms in the kidney area. I haven't kept count but my guess is I've attempted to make water about 24 times since the procedure, including 5 attempts overnight, which led to a very peaceful night of sleep. I have 3 bottles of meds and I think they're working a little bit but not nearly as much as I'd like at this point. On top of this, a nurse from the hospital called to follow-up on how I'm feeling and informed me that the kidney pain could last until the stent is removed - that can't happen until the node shrinks and I probably won't start any treatments until the week after next...wonderful! What's next? I'm having a PET scan on Monday and a follow-up appointment with Dr. Leming on Wednesday. At that time we'll discuss my options and hopefully get started on shrinking this lymph node. I'd like to thank everyone for your thoughts and prayers...it does mean a lot to me and our family. Sorry I don't respond to everyone but please know that we our overwhelmed by the support we've received. I'll do my best to keep everyone updated on the blog and link it to the Facebook account. So it looks like I'm in for a very low-key weekend. Im hoping to make it to the LLS blood cancer conference tomorrow morning...since it's just 5 minutes away from where we live I should be able to get over there for a while. Who knows, maybe these meds will kick in and make this experience a little less painful. Until then, I'm catching up on missed Family Feud episodes and watched an hysterical show about Sarah Palin called Game Change...I can only hope that most of the material was made up. There is no way she could have been that clueless. Thanks for checking in...I'll try to provide an update over the weekend! I'm off to go 'make water'.....OUUUUUCH!!!