What do you tell your mother?

Not too long ago, I had a rather interesting conversation with my mom who presently lives a great distance away. I had mentioned to her that I was having great pain in my hip and was trying to figure out what it was.

A couple of weeks ago, she called and asked me if I had had a bone scan yet. I took a deep breath. I hadn't seen my oncologist since January and I wasn't due to see him until May 14.

I wasn't scheduled for a bone scan, and I had my last pet scan in November 2008. I had gone to my general practitioner to see if we couldn't rule out some things and try to figure out what to do. I had been doing lots of poking and proding trying to figure out if it was more cancer in the bone, or if it were residual damage from the radiation I received in 1998.

Since it wasn't in a joint, I was pretty sure it wasn't arthritis. But it was very strange to me to think that it was damage from the radiation. Why did it take so long to show up, and why did it hurt when I wasn't active, and not when I was digging in the garden or whatever.

My deep breath with my mom was having to tell her what the oncologist had told me in January. If it were cancer, there wasn't anything to do except continue what I was doing (taking Fosomax and Arimidex). If the pain got too bad, then they would use radiation to try to stop it.

These words were NOT what mom wanted to hear. So...what do you do? Do you tell them the whole truth or just gloss over it? My theory has always been that it is better to tell them the truth and figure out a way to deal with it.

When I talked with the onocologist again on Thursday, he explained that radiation was very strange. Sometimes people who had had colon cancer will have radiation damage flair up, then go away, years after having had the original treatment. In addition, radiation causes fiberous scar tissue which if it isn't moved, contracts and causes pain Since I had been much less active this winter than I usually am, this was probably the cause of my pain.

So...the solution is to do stretching exersizes, particularly useful would be Yoga....I guess that's a good excuse to get a Wii. :)