A couple of days before we planned to leave on vacation, I began to have lower back twinges that usually precede muscle spasms. I quickly made a last-minute chiropractic appointment, but even though it was a good adjustment, it didn’t have the desired affect.

After we headed for Virginia Beach, in addition to the muscle spasm twinges, every time I got out of the car at a rest area, I could barely walk. I found that if I bent over to touch the ground and did ten bounces from that position several times, I could walk. So that became my pattern. People probably wondered what was wrong with me, but I didn’t care!

We drove a route we’d never gone before and drove through almost continuous traffic jams, in addition to one on the way home that was the result of a terrible accident. I don’t know how anyone could have come out of the car alive.

It was a difficult week and a half. My muscle spasms got worse and my new exercise no longer worked. The bed in our condo was unusually high, so I couldn’t get into bed without triggering very nasty spasms. We’d brought along a cooler, so I used that to climb on to get into bed!

I didn’t know how I would manage the long ride home, so I found a chiropractor in Virginia Beach in hopes that would help. I think it would have but she also gave me exercises to do three times a day. Because of my fibromyalgia issues, by the second day, I hurt so bad I had to discontinue them and I hurt more than ever.

One of the things I love most about being at the beach is walking on the boardwalk which began at the building our condo was in. Almost every day we ate breakfast at a beachfront restaurant, but the walk to get there became painful. Some days Donn insisted on coming to get me in the car so I wouldn’t have to walk back. The silver lining of that experience was that it forced us to learn to use the trolley which was actually very convenient.

On our last day at the beach, the icing on the cake was that a little African- American-probably-homeless woman who spent most of her time on sheltered benches between us and the beach, was marching around shouting at us and anyone who came near, “You’re going to burn in hell!” (On her large umbrella was printed the words, “Jesus is WATCHING you!”)

Sometime during that week, my right arm started hurting, with pain radiating into my shoulder and my back, adding to my discomfort. I remembered someone who’d had breast cancer saying that every time she had a new pain, she was terrified that she might have cancer again, but I’d decided early in my recovery that I wasn’t going to live that way. I renewed that decision now with all the new pains I was having.

Soon after we returned home, I had my regular four-month appointment with my oncologist. I was having so much pain in my arm, shoulder, back that I couldn’t sleep, so I mentioned that as well as the other pains, almost in tears, when she asked how I was doing. She got me a tissue and said, “Your lab work all looks good, but I don’t like new, unexplained pain. I want to have a full body bone scan done.”

I knew without being told that she wanted to have a bone scan done to make sure the cancer hadn’t metastasized to my bones. But my total feeling was one of relief that she was being proactive about this.

My appointment for the bone scan was on August 20 and I got the results the next day. Praise God it said there was no evidence of metastasized cancer, but the most amazing thing was that as I waited for the scan and for the results, I never worried and was never afraid! The trust and faith God had given me at the beginning of my breast cancer journey had continued. What a blessing to have the good report from this bone scan that I wouldn’t have had if not for all the pain.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a flurry of doctor visits to deal with the reasons for the pain—physical therapy for the arm, shoulder, back pain and a cortisone shot and exercises for bursitis pain in my hip. However, episodes of muscle spasms in my lower back continue to occur which make it difficult to do the exercises for my hip. Last night I couldn’t get into bed without standing on a foot stool and couldn’t move in bed without triggering spasms.

I was so excited when my bone scan didn’t show evidence of cancer that I didn’t pay much attention to the other findings, one of which was degenerative disc disease. Eventually, I looked that up on the Internet and discovered it could be causing my lower back muscle spasms. My oncologist had told me to follow up with my PCP on the results of the bone scan, but I hadn’t mentioned that when I saw her because the muscle spasms had improved. So once again I’m praying for healing and for wisdom about what medical help I need for the muscle spasms. Prayers appreciated!

 Father, thank you for another reminder of how you use all things for good when we love you and are called according to your purpose. Thank you for our excellent medical facilities and for the many opportunities to be a blessing and a testimony to people I wouldn’t meet any other way! Amen.