hello

so it's been a while huh??.. i just haven't had much energy these last few days..been very faint.. couldn't stand much.. could barely muster up the energy to talk...

you know come to think of it... i don't remember what feeling normal is like... i'm so used to feeling something wrong, that i forget that this isn't normal... i need to start remembering that..

those were some nice times... not feeling weak, pain, bruised, shakes... mornings were my favorite.. you're all tired.. the sun is lighting your room, and i could just curl up in your duvet, put my arm around my wife and snuggle... now... i wake up 3 time a night from the knee pain... and the first thing i do when i wake up is take a concoction of medication.. 1 pill for pain, dilaudid;1 stool softener, because pain meds make you constipated( sorry to be so graphic); 1 celebrex, because the steroids they prescribe me are practically depleting my bones, which is the cause of my pain, which in turn is giving me arthritis; 1 calcium supplement, again because of the steroids..

one thing i have painfully learnt, and mean that in ever sense of the word is that steroids are the worst thing this planet has invented... when i first started this 'intensification' phase, which was some time in feb or march... they had me on dexamethasone, a steroid... now when you are on steroids the side effects can vary from person to person.. so i'm just going to tell you what i experienced... i only took em from day1-5 of a 21 day cycle that repeats and repeats.. so from day 1 to 5.. i would be dead.. depressed, angry.. and not like you would think.. i was so depressed that the whole aura of the house would change... the house would feel dead... this is how my wife and people who have visited during this time have said... the emotional ups and downs i would have would be ridiculous.. my wife would be doing something in the kitchen and I would yell at her for no good reason.. she could be breathing and I would get mad... my poor wife... now let me tell you when we were first on this drug the doctors didn't mention a word about the possible side effects.. so we thought i was just being a dick and cancer had made me this angry person... eventually we realized that something might be wrong when i got so mad at my wife that I told her to eat out of the trash.. i can't tell you how embarrassed i am of that...after that I asked the doctors.. "i have been getting more short tempered and I have been yelling" etc.. so the first question they asked me was " do you get angry enough to want to kill someone?" I looked at the doctor with shock and slowly replied " noooo.." so then they go on to explain that there are emotional side effects, and that if you have thoughts of suicide and extreme anger...the type that makes you want to actually kill someone...you should bring it up to the doctors. Up till then i just got depressed and quiet for days and became short tempered.. all that seemed to have been normal effects... so that was an unpleasant surprise.. so after day 5.. days 6 and 7 i became MORE depressed.. to the point where i didn't want to make the effort to live... not that i wanted to die, but i didn't see a point in trying.. mind you when your brain function isn't normal, nothing you think is normal... i like to brag and tell my wife i now know what PMS is like... when you have no control over yourself.. i mean i know the steroids interfere with brain functions, i don't know if PMS has the same effect... anyways, so come day 8 until 15 i experienced the worst pain describable... i couldn't sleep.. my body would convulse.. literally, i would lie on the couch and convulse from the amount of pain.. and no matter how much morphine i took, it wouldn't go away... i couldn't walk, all my joints hurt.. it was like a screwdriver drilling from inside my joints trying to get out.. the worst were my knees... my knees still hurt... the pain was for soo long it just wouldn't go away.. my body was exhausted from the pain but i couldn't sleep... it would eventually get soo bad that tears would just fall down my face, because nothing would make it go away.. i think thats just how my body coped.. i wasn't sad or anything but i would cry...

so long story short.. i got off that drug after 3 or 4 months and now I have a different pain... still pain.. but not the same.. i'll talk about the pain i have now some other time...

anyways.. i have to go take some pain pills now.. ahhahahah.. ridiculous.. this coming from the guy that wouldn't take any type of medication before this happened...

peace