A Touch of mucositis

I woke up this morning and I could feel the beginning of mouth sores starting in my mouth. As of yet, I don't have any open spots or any areas that particularly hurt but I can feel that my mouth is getting "hot" in places. The mouth sores are the number one most commonly reported side effect of the chemo I'm on, and combined with my eternal steroid use, it's no suprise that I'm starting to get sores. I have some pretty good meds around the house that are left over from the SCT that I can (and will) use.

With this chemo I have changed my philosophy on pain management. On all the previous regimines I've accepted a certain level of pain and not used pain killers unless really needed (translation: never). The reason I accepted the pain was so that I could have an eyes wide open view of any changes within my body that might manifest as pain. With this GVD, if I even think I MIGHT have pain later, I go straight to the Lortab. I'm not messing around this time. The pain I'm experiencing is reasonably light, intermitant and easily treated. Mainly it is concentrated in my left lower lung and right lower lung. The significance of this is that this is obviously where my most threatening tumors are and the pain has really only taken hold since I've been on the chemo. I take that to mean that there is alot of inflammatory process going on in these battleground areas, and what that means to me is that there's some serious cancer killing going on there to. I have this irrational fear that I will become addicted to the Lortab and once chemo is over I'll have trouble kicking my habit. I know thats ridiculious but I've been pretty hardcore about not using pain killers and a total shift in doctrine towards a near habitual use is akward for me.

Anyway, in total GVD chemo remains the easiest chemo to date. Energy is still high, motivation still good. I'm having a little trouble sleeping (trouble falling asleep and staying asleep) but I still think it could be steroid effect. I fell off the decadron a couple days ago (the main suspect in my sleep trouble) and I taper off the prednisone before too long so I hope everything will resolve itself in a few days.