Each day that I wake up, before I make my first move, I wonder, “Will this hurt today? Will my back and hips feel better?” The answer has been consistently, "NO."

I was trying to remember the last time I felt completely (or almost completely) good. I think it was the week before I did the chemo, radiology, vertebroplasty and blood transfusion all in one week. It seems that after that week I have gone downhill. Maybe it was too much on my body? The first week after, I felt horrible and I attributed it to the chemo. This was expected. The first and even second week are expected to be horrible with nausea, fatigue, etc. The third week I was still exhausted all of the time and for the first time decided just to lay in bed all day other than the times I had appointments. That’s when I slowly got a fever. The fever crept up to 102.6. At this point, I also started having pain in my right foot, which prohibited me from walking even to the bathroom. It made everything extremely painful.

I finally checked into St. Joe's. That’s when I fractured my L3 vertebrae and had to have another vertebroplasty. My back is still not healed. My hips hurt from the tumors, even though we did radiation on them. Today was the first day I woke up and felt even slightly better. I was able to walk to the kitchen without wincing with pain. That was good news! I am hoping tomorrow will be even better. I am concerned that I am not able to walk very far without my body hurting and becoming totally winded. I am really tired all of the time now. I think the reason is because they raised the level of morphine to 300 mg per dose. When I was first diagnosed, I was only on 15 mg.

Link to blog: http://themelissawaller.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/road-to-recovery/