6 momth Update

Hi Simon,

Lovely to hear your update. It sounds like you are making progress, albeit slowly. That sounds like a good choice to give up your physically stressful work, and look for something less stressful. Good quality of life is vital, and having cancer is often a wake-up call to re-evaluate one's life and lifestyle, and specifically often to re-evaluate one's working life. 

Glad to hear the scan was clear. The pain in your side could just be the nerves that were damaged during surgery, re-awakening - I've read that this can take sometimes a long time, for nerves to regenerate and meanwhile they can cause some pain as they repair. Equally it might be muscular - similar thing, that the muscles that were cut through during surgery, can take a while to recover. I've read this can happen some while after, not necessarily straight away after. 

Main thing is, you have a clear scan. Are you on any pain meds? Simple paracetamol is supposed to be good for muscular pain, I think. Check with your doctor what they suggest you could take, though. 

Hi, i was doing really well after the surgery for a few months but the pain and started after i went back to work, think the pain is due to bouncing around while driving as trucks dont have the best ride, did a 300 mile trip to a friends funeral who had stage 4 and while it was extremely tiring the pain wasnt as bad as 100 miles in a truck, im not taking any pain meds as im one of those people that have a high tolerance to them, unless their really stong prescribed ones they dont seem to work and i can't take the strong stuff if im driving.

I have one week of driving left and I've already applied for some jobs and im waiting to get replies, might try getting my old job back where i sat at a bench building electronics, was physically easy and not mentally draining plus i quite liked it so a lot less stressful too.

Yes it does sound as if the truck driving isn't doing you any favours in more ways than one! Your health and wellbeing is the moist important. Your old job sounds a good way forward! - you can take care of your body whilst working, which I imagine is very hard when truck driving due to time constraints, vehicle, stress levels etc. I suspect you may find the pain subsides once you change that job!! (I had terrible lower back ache years ago, and was only in my 50s and suspected it was something to do with my work which involved carrying full baskets of laundry up three flights of stairs to rooms in the B&B where I worked...and sure enough, within about two weeks of my changing my job, the back pain completely subsided!!)

I thought I had a high tolerance to paracetamol as years ago when I took it for a headache it never touched me. However, I now take it for other things instead such as muscular pain, and it works a treat! So perhaps it was just that I needed to find what worked best on different kinds of pain. Not that I get much pain anyway as I have a high pain threshhold, meaning I can tolerate a lot of most kinds of pain without it causing me any distress. I take paracetamol atm for what I suspect is arthritis in my hips and back (I have it in my fingers so it's probably elsewhere as well now) and it does help a bit. I won't take anything stronger because I don't "do" meds if avoidable. 

Good luck in your job hunt. Yes, do consider that old job which sounds really nice (wouldn't mind doing that myself in fact!!) and it's likely from what you say, that it will resolve the pain fairly quickly once you give up your current physically stressful job.