I also want this listed here so I don't forget in the future what I went through during this time period. This literally has been a saga in my life--2011 to now--of non-stop pain issues, all starting around 2008. So it's not so painfully dull, I'll add in some pictures from each period of time. Perhaps seeing how well I hid my pain will explain why this took so long to solve.
I'll also put this all behind a jump cut so I'm not clogging up anyone's browser against their will!
One thing I mention on my other social media venues is that I struggle with chronic pain.
Since at least 2007, I have had horrific periods. When I say horrific, I mean the kind of pain who took me--a woman who sprained her ankle so severely doctors feared it was broken and was able to walk on said ankle with just a limp and an average dose of ibuprofen in her system--off my feet. I do not have a low tolerance to pain, and this pain stopped me FLAT. I spent years bouncing between doctors until I ended up on a med we thought would control it: a prescription birth control that was taken for nothing other than pain relief. For a while, I was good.
Then 2011 hit.
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| My Mom's Cat, Milo, was my constant companion through pain when I lived at home. |
In my heart, I knew it wasn't muscle pain or anything even remotely that normal.
Though my family has mostly good health, we have our share of issues. My mother's family is full of women with reproductive issues. My aunt on that side has endometriosis beyond Stage IV. Her radical hysterectomy years ago gave her little relief. Her mom, my maternal grandmother, had uterine cancer last year; also, there are women all across that family with either pain issues or unexplained infertility. My dad had his gallbladder removed under emergency circumstances and had open heart surgery when I was 16. His own father died of a massive cardiac event of some type, and my paternal grandmother has every type of arthritis known to man as well as lost her gallbladder years ago for some reason. I knew in my gut that the random pain I had had wasn't normal and, knowing my medical history, it wasn't going to be good.
Regardless of this knowledge, life took precedence. I didn't have time (in my head) to deal with a random coming-and-going pain. Because it didn't stop me, I didn't stop.
March 2014, right about the time I entered what I look back on as The Pain Spiral.
By that April, the on-and-off stabbing pain had became a constant dull ache in the right side of my pelvis. It would spike into a stabbing pain radiating into my ribs at random, and it always felt like I had a golf ball in my pelvis. I ignored it for those few months as, again, I had a lot of other things on my plate that led to me putting my pain on the back burner. Grad school, job issues, my grandmother's health, a hellish break-up that March, my dad's (not so happy) pending retirement: all of those things took precedence in my mind to what surely was me "overreacting to normal womanly pains." I'd also get a random-yet-brief stabbing pain under my right ribs, but it would come and go so suddenly that I assumed it was me moving weird or pain radiating from my hips in some way.
Then, it started affecting my work. I could barely move from a standing position to a sitting one (or vice versa) without wincing in pain. The waistband of my pants would land right on the epicenter of my pain, sending me into spasms of intense, stabbing pain. I started changing my wardrobe to accommodate the issue, buying pants with higher waistbands and wearing almost nothing but dresses to work. Still, the pain continued. Random, simple movements like bending to pick up a pencil nearly took me to my knees in pain. I argued with my doctors and my mother that my pain wasn't just me "overreacting," but no one took me seriously. I ignored it as a result, refusing to be slowed.
A few months of this saw me at my wit's end. Finally winning an argument with my mother over how serious this really was (...I was on my parents' insurance...), I got an ultrasound and learned I had a cyst on my left ovary and, not one, but three on my right, the largest being over 4 cm. The gynecologist was perplexed as, honestly, the size of the largest cyst I had didn't correlate to the level of pain I was in; regardless, she switched me to a stronger BCP and sent me off to "watch and wait" as I wasn't a candidate for surgery. A few weeks later, I rolled over in bed and felt a very distinct pop inside my pelvic cavity--right where the cyst was--followed by very strong cramps. Sure enough, a follow-up ultrasound confirmed my cyst had burst. The severe pain was gone, but I still had the golf ball feeling in my abdomen 24/7.
Over the next few months, I had cyst after cyst pop up on my ovaries (most often my right), just to have them randomly disappear or burst. I lived in cycles of pain (often around my period in addition to normal cramps) and constant discomfort. My weight started ballooning 10-15 pounds one week to drop off just as suddenly a few weeks later. The acne I had battled as a teenager and in my early 20s came back in full-force on my chin: absolutely nothing calmed it down. Through it all, everyone told me the same thing: take 600 mg ibuprofen every 6 hours, stop whining, use heating pads (or, in my case, cloth rice bags I heated in the microwave), and deal because all women your age get cysts and it's no big deal. They pointed to me being depressed over the break-up (even though I had bounced back from that months prior), stressed with the graduate school program I completely hated, and feeling stuck in my current jobs to fuel their beliefs. I swallowed the pills as told alongside my thoughts, knowing they were as wrong about whatever was happening inside of me but without an option to do anything else.
March 2012; You can't tell in this photo, but I was on nearly 800 mg ibuprofen and functioning solely because I had a Thermacare heat patch on my abdomen. I was in agony that weekend.
My pain continued in cycles clean into February 2012. I was in two back-to-back weddings set for that upcoming June, facing a need to drop out of my graduate school program, and attempting to juggle what felt like a hundred balls at once. I also met who became my husband during this time. By March, Hubster and I were dating, and my pain had hit a whole new level. I had progressed to the point where I was taking 600 mg ibuprofen every six hours every single day. My body seemed to absolutely hate this (in the form of around-the-clock nausea), and I wasn't getting any relief from the discomfort at all. I tried desperately to hide the trouble I was having, particularly from my new boyfriend (who I didn't want to scare away: in my mind, no one wanted a 24-year-old in chronic pain) and all but my closest friends (who, in my mind, were too busy and stressed with their own lives to be unfairly burdened with my issues). My body chose otherwise.
I am ashamed to say my turning point was projectile vomiting all over a friend's bathroom when the ibuprofen I had taken to function turned my stomach faster than I could move.
To say I was mortified would be a gross understatement. I found myself forced to confess to a new boyfriend my chronic pain struggle as well as to my friends. Surprisingly (to me), they were all supportive. I called my aunt on their recommendation, who comforted me and gave me a plan. She felt that I, like her, had endometriosis as many of my symptoms mirrored what she had at my age, and, with her talking to my mother, we got a follow-up appointment and ultrasound scheduled quickly.
My boyfriend stuck with me through all the appointments, ultrasounds, blood tests, and referrals. Never once did he bat an eyelash at the craziness, instead taking my hand in his and walking alongside me through everything he could. Never once did he consider me a burden. Never once did he threaten to leave for an "easier" girlfriend. Instead, he took it as a way he could help me. He drove me to appointments. He made me stay off my feet when I was miserable in pain. He listened to me anytime I needed to vent, never making me feel like a burden. And, above all else, he believed me. When so many others refused to listen, he was the one that always stood up with me when I called them out on pushing me aside and ignoring my symptoms.
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| June 2012--Known in my world as The June of All Teh Weddinz |
...but we'll get back to that crazy-pants gynecologist proving her medical degree came from a cereal box insert...
By April 2013, I had taken my current job as an adult education instructor. I absolutely adored my job and was finding it incredibly rewarding, and I also found that it worked better with my pain. My classroom was near the student kitchen, where I could reheat my rice bag as needed to combat the pain. My office was also close to that classroom, so I could stash ibuprofen there and quickly take it between classes. Teaching was less physical than being an aide, meaning I put less strain on my ovaries by bending over constantly. As long as I could handle the seatbelt across my hips to and from work, I was gold. Things were going very well with my then-boyfriend and me, and I was on cloud 9.
During that time, I had a follow-up with a gynecologist I had switched to roughly six months prior when I kept getting recurrent ovarian cysts. The new gynecologist, Dr. G, sent me for an ultrasound, on which we found a few more cysts on my right ovary. She then told me my pain was all from ovulation...something she said five minutes earlier my BCP was supressing. When I asked her why I was in pain daily--not monthly--if it was ovulation pain, she told me I ovulate daily. I ended the appointment there and then.
Now, during this time my maternal grandmother was undergoing a radical hysterectomy for uterine cancer: I was not willing to play around now that I had a family history of endometriosis and uterine cancer. I asked around my office and got a referral to a great gynecologist near my workplace.
...but that story will continue in Part Two.
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