(Mid February to 15 April)
Approximately 9 weeks ago Jimmy started complaining that his back was sore. I did what most of us would do and told him he probably slept funny. Over the next few weeks his back would be painful and then it would feel better and then he would play a round of golf and it would be sore again.
The guys has planned their annual golf tour, I call it their male bonding week. They were due to leave on the 12th of March and Jimmy was adamant that his back would be fine by then. I suggested he take some anti-inflammatory tablets for a week because this is generally what a GP would prescribe.The weekend before they left he complained his back was really sore and he wasn't sure if he would be able to play golf. He decided that since he had paid he would go along and only play if his back felt better. The left on the Wednesday and each night Jimmy would phone and tell me he was in agony. He was battling to get out of bed in the mornings and the guys were having to help him put his shoes on because he couldn't bend down at all.
He got back from tour and went to see our GP who put him on a week's anti-inflammatory tablets. These didn't really help. The following week we went camping with a group of friends and he basically couldn't do anything. We got back and he went to see our GP again who gave him a Cortisone injection. Two days later it still didn't feel any better so our GP suggested Jimmy go for Xrays and he took some bloods. The Xrays came back and they couldn't pick up anything and the only thing that came back from the blood tests was that Jimmy's iron levels were low so we got him some iron tablet and another script for some stronger painkillers.
At this stage Jimmy was really battling with the pain and starting to look very tired. He asked our GP to please refer him to a specialist. The specialist gave him an appointment for the 23rd April which was 3 weeks away but referred him to a physiotherapist, saying that he believed it was a muscular problem and that by the time the 23rd came, he didn't even think Jimmy would need to see him.
He started going to physio twice a week for 2 weeks and then he did a business trip up to the Eastern Cape when he was in serious pain. On the Sunday after his return I had to phone our GP and ask him to please do something for Jimmy's pain. He came around to our home and gave Jimmy a pethidine injection and agreed that he would have a word with the specialist on Monday as he said this had all been going on too long now. I managed to convince Jimmy to stay home on the Monday to try and rest his back but on Monday morning we tried for about 40 minutes and could not get him out of bed Each time he moved different parts of his body was going into spasm. I phoned our GP's rooms again and told the receptionist what was happening. Later that morning the specialist's rooms phoned to say that we needed to have an MRI done today. She explained that the specialist was in theatre for the day but once we were done, we should come up to his rooms and she would see if he could pop up between operations.
This he did and took one look at the MRI results and diagnosed a fractured vertebra and basically told us that unless Jimmy had fallen off a roof or fallen out a tree it was not something that just happened easily and sent us off for another batch of blood tests, rattling off a list of possibilities including bone marrow cancer.
I remember coming home and saying to Jimmy, "How are these specialists these days, just throwing cancer in with the list of possible problems?"
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