Pain Relief

As I said about three weeks ago ... taxotere, it hurts. I told it to the nurse at the last treatment too. She made big eyes at me, and said "you are allowed to use panadol". I stared at her. "Really?". Honestly, there are so many rules about what drugs you can and can't combine that I was convinced panadol was out.

"Really", the nurse confirmed. "There are no medals at the end of this", she finished off. I stared at her in disbelief. What do you mean there are no medals? Whenever you endure pain, there is always a medal. It's not always a shining gold disc that you can hang in your trophy cupboard. Sometimes it's something more meaningful like self-belief.

Anyhow, as the pain hit in earnest this morning, after a one hour family conference on whether to take the panadol or not, I took a panadol. It took the edge off the pain, just enough to make my day bearable, but not so much that I was in "conquer the world" mode.

Why did it take a one hour family conference to convince me to take a panadol? Because we are a family of endurance junkies. We love endurance sports, and when you do endurance you hurt. And if you choose to mask the pain, you suffer for it later on, usually with niggly injuries that drag out for months. So in the long run, it's just much better to stay in touch with your body, to feel the pain.

Having said that ... after one panadol, I still feel the pain.  Just not as much.