24/10/19

A different kind of day today. Went to the dentist to begin a crown replacement - when he did an extraction some time ago he found a tiny hole under the crown on an adjacent tooth, which would eventually have led to decay and a possible infection route into the bone, which is something I don't need right now. Some fancy new dental imaging technology, which meant he spent most of the time looking at a screen rather than at my teeth, which was slightly disconcerting. Back in a fortnight to have the temporary crown removed and a "permanent" new one in its place. There was some concern about doing the dentistry while I'm on bisphosphonate bone-strengthener, because there is a slight chance of "osteonecrosis if the jaw" which might have meant big problems. But no sign of ONJ and Dr.Ch said OK to go ahead as long as the dentistry was confined to the top of the tooth and wouldn't go into the bone at all. Which it was, and didn't.
Dental anaesthetic now starting to wear off, which is just as well as I have a couple of phone calls to make this afternoon.

Walking is still good - haven't quite made it up the stairs without holding on, but it's not far away and things usually improve as the day goes on. It's probably pretty much as good as it's ever going to get, because the damage to the hip joint caused by that lesion and "extra-medullary mass" isn't going to go away. I suppose a hip replacement might be an option at some stage, but that wouldn't be straightforward. This is guesswork, but I imagine that there would need to be some surgical reconstruction / reinforcement of the weakened bone on the pelvic side of the joint to give something solid to anchor an implant to.

No unpleasant side-effects from yesterday's Velcade injection. That's good.

As for the Dex sleeplessness - went to bed at 04:45 last night and read for probably half an hour. Woke up about 07:30, slept again till 08:30, then nothing until got up a bit after 09:00. Still lots of Big Bang Theories to keep me going in the early hours - not sure what I'll do when I finally get to the end of those. Had another 20mg dexamethasone this morning, so expecting a repeat performance tonight...