Hi Sid. My name is Julie. Hi Julie. I'll be your nurse today and I'll be on your core team of nurses, and we'll be working together most every day this week. How are you this morning? Well, I'm not feeling great. My back pain bothered me enough to keep me up most of the night. I just can't get comfortable. Yeah. Your night nurse told me that you had a hard time falling back to sleep after your 4:00 AM labs, and that you've been experiencing some back pain. I'm really sorry to hear that. Do you mind if I take a few minutes and ask you some questions? No, I don't mind. Go ahead. All right. I'd just like to get a better understanding of your pain, so that we can come up with a plan to relieve it. Well, that would be fantastic. I've had this pain for weeks and I just haven't got any help for it. Everybody's been focused on the plan for chemotherapy. So during the day when I'm talking to the team of doctors, there's just so much going on. I forget to talk about it. But at night when everything slows down, it keeps me awake. That sounds really hard. When exactly did the back pain start? Well, if I think back, it's probably a few weeks before I was diagnosed. I think it's because of the lymphoma mass in my abdomen. That's what one of the doctors mentioned that it could be, once. Yes. That makes a lot of sense. Pain is a really unfortunate, but known side effects of an abdominal mass. I'm really sorry that you're experiencing that though. Can you tell me more about the pain? Can you describe its quality? Is it dull, sharp, continuous? Does it come and go? How intense is it? It's just there all the time. When I find a comfortable position, it's usually just a dull ache. But if I'm walking or I'm straining or if I feel stressed or anxious, the pain just becomes more intense. Sometimes it's hard to just figure out how to best position myself just to stop the hurting. Can you show me exactly where the pain is? I want to make sure that we aren't missing any other potential causes of the pain. I'd like to take a look under your shirt, at your skin, and have you point to the pain? Yeah. Sure. As far as I can tell, I don't know if there's anything that you can see, but it's right down here. Okay. You're right. There's nothing really that I can see right now, but it's important that we check your skin integrity regularly while you're in the hospital. I just wanted to make sure that we document the exact location of the pain, and this way, if anything changes we'll know. Thank you. I appreciate your listening. You're welcome. I have a couple of other ideas for a ways that we might try to ease your pain. Would it be helpful if I brought you either a heating pad or an ice pack? Maybe. Yeah. I also wonder if it would help if I brought you some extra pillows and helped you reposition yourself in a way that relieved the pressure. Have you noticed anything that makes the pain better or worse? That's hard to say, but I'm honestly willing to try anything at this point. I'm sure. We can try these non-medication approaches. I'd also like to ask the team about ordering some medication as a backup. This way, if the pain gets really bad at night and the pillows aren't helping and the heating pad isn't working, then you can ask for medication to relieve the pain, and hopefully you'll sleep better. Yeah. That sounds good. I will do pretty much anything, to get some good sleep right now. Yeah. I'm sure that you would. There's a relationship between pain and sleep. I mean, you obviously, already know that if the pain is really bad, you can't sleep well. But we also know that not sleeping well, makes the pain worse. So it's really important that we come up with a plan to help with both the pain and the sleep. That makes sense. I'm glad you explained that. Thank you. Sure. Absolutely. All right. When I come back with the extra pillows, the heating pad, and the ice pack, we can go over the schedule for the day and you can ask me any questions and I will answer them for you. I'd also like you to think about what other things we can do to help you feel more comfortable.
