I Will Not Suffer In Silence

Around 9:30-10pm tonight, I was sitting on the couch watching TV with my husband when the pain set in again. Only this time, it was far worse than the pain I’d had all day.

Going by the Mankoski Pain Scale, I was a 7 all day. But tonight, it reached 8.5.

All day, I’d gotten by with Motrin and half a Tylenol 3 at regular dose intervals. But tonight when the pain reached 8.5, I took a full Tylenol 3, did the ‘child’s pose’ yoga pose, stretched my back, did my breathing exercises… none of it helped.

It wasn’t until I took a second Tylenol 3 that the pain slowly diminished. Normally I’d be passed out by now but I’m left with jaw clenching from all the codeine. Not good for my old TMJ problem (going back to the head injury in the car accident in ‘94).

My husband wondered if I might be developing a tolerance to the Tylenol 3.

How?

I only take it once a month for a few days at a time. And today, I was stoned silly on just half a Tylenol 3 every 4 hours.

I hope he’s not right.

In any case, the pain finally went away. The bleeding ramped up but not by a lot during the pain spike.

I put myself in all my pain moment on video. First time I did that. I’ll post the video tomorrow.

The reason for the pain spike? I am wondering now if it was the eggs that were mixed into the pad thai I had for dinner. I tried to pick the egg bits out but I probably didn’t get them all.

Last time I ate eggs while menstruating - I had them sunny side up and ate them for dinner - this was in April, 2008 - and I ended up on the floor screaming in pain and had to be taken to E.R..

I’ve got an egg allergy that normally leaves me with racing heart and panic feelings. But when combined with endometriosis flareup, it makes for much danger.

That’s all I can think caused the pain spike tonight. Tiny bits of egg.

My ma has been told for years that she has hypoglycemia and is borderline diabetic.
After I had pancreatitis at the young age of 21, I began to also exhibit hypoglycemia. I was told that this was due to the pancreas being forever weakened because it had become acutely inflamed. The cause was never determined, though one doctor speculated I must be an alcoholic because I was 21 years old and in college, so OBVIOUSLY I was a rabid partier (bugger the fact that #1 I commuted to college and also worked full time to help my ma pay off her debt, #2 I was still quite naive and under the influence of my Christian Fundamentalist mother and #3 I was working as a daycare teacher in a Christian daycare).
A nurse speculated that the acute pancreatitis was likely the result of being put on Cipro (very strong antibiotic) for recurrent sinus infections during my first couple years working with children in a daycare setting.

I’ve always gone with the nurse’s idea of how the pancreatitis happened, because I certainly wasn’t a fracking alcoholic.

Many years later, in 2006, I was doing diet elimination to try to see what foods might be making my Endometriosis pain worse. I took out wheat and 2 weeks later, added it back in.
My body let me know wheat was NOT okay.

When people ask me what my reaction is to eating wheat, I always say it feels like hypoglycemia. I get irritated, I get a headache, nausea, eye pain, tunnel vision…these are all the things my ma says she gets with hypoglycemia, so I’d assumed for years that I too had hypoglycemia.

The problem with that theory is that once I cut wheat out of my diet for several months, I stopped getting ‘hypoglycemic’ attacks. So I’ve been trying to convince my ma that she doesn’t have hypoglycemia or borderline diabetes. If she just cuts wheat and yeast out of her diet like I did, she may find that she too recovers from this affliction. But she won’t have it. And other people I’ve talked to can’t seem to see the connection.

In 2006 and again in 2008, I was tested for Celiac, and it came back negative both times. But I’m told I present classic for Celiac. I’ve been urged to do an endoscopy but why go through that when I can just abstain from the foods?
Then again I guess it’s best to know for certain if I have Celiac, cuz of what I’m about to show you.

Here comes the HA! I TOLD YOU SO part…

Researchers believe Diabetes and Celiac disease linked
LONDON, U.K.– Scientists at the University of Cambridge and Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry confirmed Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes and celiac disease appear to share a common genetic origin.

Their findings, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, identified seven chromosome regions which are shared between the two diseases.
The research suggests that type 1 diabetes and celiac disease may be caused by common underlying mechanisms such as autoimmunity-related tissue damage and intolerance to dietary antigens (foreign substances which prompt an immune response).
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder which causes the body to attack the beta cells of the pancreas, limiting its ability to produce the insulin necessary to regulate blood sugar levels.
Celiac disease, also an autoimmune disorder, attacks the small intestine and is triggered by the consumption of gluten (a protein found in wheat, barley and rye) and cereals. The development and anatomy of the small intestine and pancreas are closely related, and the gut immune system shares connections with pancreatic lymph nodes, which have been linked to an inflammation of the pancreas and the destruction of beta cells.
The researchers, were funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and Coeliac UK, believe that these regions of the chromosomes regulate the mechanisms that cause the body’s own immune system to attack both the beta cells in the pancreas and the small intestine.
Their results suggest that type 1 diabetes and celiac disease not only share genetic causes but could have similar environmental triggers as well.
Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease together affect about 1% of the population.

Good times.

Well I’ve gone and done it again. I’ve eaten a forbidden food and now I’m paying for it. My entire body feels like fleas are crawling and biting me.

I had 3/4 cup of Thai Kitchen brand boxed Spicy Thai Chili Jasmine Rice.

Within half an hour of eating the rice, my whole body got itchy, I felt light-headed, headachey and sleepy, and then the anxiety and heart racing began.

The food is billed as gluten free, which is why I bought it. However, it also contains MSG in the forms of Hydrolyzed Soy Protein and Autolyzed yeast extract. I saw this on the label when I bought the food, but I ignored it, thinking I’d be alright, because I didn’t remember having a reaction to this rice before.

Well, now I’ve learned my lesson. No MSG in any form, under any relabeling. It’s a neurotoxin, it’s dangerous, it’s already on my NO FLY list, and it will kill me.

The worst part is waiting to get this crap out of my system. *itch itch itch*

Tonight my man took me out to sushi. I brought along my wheat-free tamari.

We tried two new items; king oyster mushrooms, and the waiter’s special tea that he’d gotten from a friend touring in Taiwan. He wasn’t sure what kind of tea it was, but said the loose translation of the Chinese meant ‘mountain tea’, and that it was a famous brand in Taiwan. I peeked inside the cup as the tea was brewing, and saw that the leaves were tiny rolled up balls. As the tea steeped, the balls opened up to lovely green leaves and stems, and tinted the water a greenish-yellow
When I got home, I researched the tea - I think it was an oolong tea, because it had a lovely perfumey scent/flavour and matched the physical description of what I saw in my cup. I highly doubt either of the mushrooms or the tea caused the GI reaction that I had about an hour after eating. I only had one episode of diarrhea, and barely any cramping leading up to it, so it was a mild reaction by my body’s standards.

That leads me to believe that either the rice was glutinous or that the gluten-free tamari somehow had some gluten in it. I researched the tamari on the web and found out that other people had complained about getting sick after using the wheat-free tamari.

Person #1 (although the people on the forum were of no help whatsoever to her).

Person #2 (2nd reply in the thread)

Within that second link, I saw the term ‘histamine toxicity’, so I looked it up and found this educational article.
Also in that second link, people talked about the possibility of mold being in the soy sauce.

So the possibilities I have are:

• Soy allergy
• Gluten was in the rice
• Mouldy soy
• Yeast contamination somehow

Then again, one of the dishes I had contained a sauce on top of the sushi roll. I wonder if there was any gluten in the mayonnaise-based sauce? It’s difficult to find these things out when the people at the sushi joints we frequent do not speak much English.

This is why I gave up eating Chinese food. First they told me “oh yes - vegetarian” when I would ask if a meal was veggie only, no meat, come to find out that it had pork in it (back when I was vegetarian) … and then they told me “no, no wheat, no gluten” when I’d ask, only to have a fried batter dish served to me. This happened at too many Chinese restaurants to mention over the years. I just got to the breaking point and fired Chinese food from my diet rather than continue risking getting sick.

I really really don’t want to have to give up Japanese food, too.

My next steps:

• Go back to the same restaurant
• …with a new bottle of wheat-free tamari
• Ask for the dish I got again, sans the sauce
• Try the mushroom dish again

And Wait For It.

November 5, 2008 edit: Sorry it took so long to update. The culprit was the sauce they put on top of the roll.

I didn’t have pain on Friday morning, though I was still bleeding. So I had really bad pain and bleeding for three days - on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - this time around. That for me is about right. A five-day cycle overall, with three really bad days.

I did go in to work at the new assignment on Friday. This place is a government-run facility, I’m told. There was order, stability, curriculum, and professional staff. I asked if they’d need me again soon. By lunchtime, they asked me if I really did want to come back, because they saw how well the kids responded to me, and said they liked my work.
Even though I have social phobia with other adults, and even though I felt extremely awkward, I really liked that center so much better than the first one I was assigned to.

By the end of the workday on Friday, I’d had a child plop down in my lap during story time, and another child drew me a card with flowers on it, and yet another child grabbed hold of the back of my shirt and decided to be my shadow during recess. Mad giggling ensued when I turned around and asked who was behind me - she moved with me every time I twisted and turned - obscuring her identity. I figured the only way to get her to let go of my shirt was to climb the monkey bars and go down the slide. It worked - and I “ran” to get away from her again, but she’d catch me every time and we’d have to repeat the scenario. ;) After the second time around, I had upwards of six or seven children playing this game, running after me, giggling like crazy. :)

George went away by Friday evening, and just in time for a cold to settle in. I woke up in the middle of the night with phlegm and a very sore throat. Ugh. I began taking 1,000mg vitamin C and popping the Cold-Eze cough drops again (this cold tried to settle in a week or two ago and I thought I’d fought it off).
I’ve had this sore throat on and off since Friday, and today it turned into a cough. Great. Good thing I have leftover codeine cough syrup from a year or so ago when I was sick. Hopefully I can fend the cold off again.

That’s the risk you take when working with children. Their germs are evil little mutating bastards. I have this saying - “children will kill ya!”

Friday night, my man took me out to dinner at our favourite Thai restaurant, and afterwards, we walked around town a bit.

On Saturday, I attended a friend’s birthday party *and* another friend’s wedding.
Today, we gathered at the bride and groom’s house for brunch, and watched them do the official signing of all the documents. I got to hear funny stories about the groom - I always like to hear families tell such stories. I’m a huge genealogy fan, so hearing anyone’s history, no matter how embarrassing or not, holds a lot of interest for me. I am fond of seeing families together, chatting, hanging out - doing what our family used to do before gramma and grampa moved back to Kentucky and the family fell apart without their parents as a solid rock and anchor nearby.

Bah, but I digress.

It was when we were on our way home from our friends’ house that my cough set in. And now I’m back home again, and I’m depressed all over again. I have our own wedding to continue planning. I feel alone in this planning.

Bleh. I’m so glad I don’t work tomorrow. I’m so glad I insisted on a 32-hour work week. I need tomorrow as a mental health day, and actually, I wonder how much sicker I’ll get with this cold. It’s definitely not helping with my depression. I’ve been depressed since the beginning of June - at least, that’s what my diary says.

I don’t know what else to say. Journaling got a lot off my chest, but I’ve not solved anything and I don’t feel any better emotionally like I usually do through journaling. I don’t know what else I can say or rant about in an attempt to make myself feel better.

Hmmm.

Maybe drinking a lot of alcohol socially over the past two weeks hasn’t helped my depression, either. :p

I know what would make me feel better. Winning the friggin’ lottery would make me feel better. I don’t want to work anymore. I don’t want to worry about rent and bills anymore. I don’t want to stress over wedding finances anymore.

One last thing, just so I have it preserved here - my thumb is doing much better. Ever since yesterday morning, or was it Friday night?… I’ve been constantly applying Curel lotion to my thumb. It’s healing up nicely, and much faster than applying that stupid steroidal ointment I was given from my doctor. I wonder if I’m also allergic to that. Wouldn’t surprise me. My ma is allergic to cortisone, and only found out when she had it injected for back pain. She can’t even have it topically - it makes her rash out and also look like some kind of leper.

Righto, that’s all I got.

On the last day of my camping trip, the sun came out and we went out on our friends’ boats for the day. I’d been sitting on the back of my friend’s boat, dangling my feet in the cold water, when I decided I’d had enough sitting in the sun.

I got up, bare-footed, and climbed back into the boat. When my right foot came down on the back seat of the boat, the foot fell between the boat cushions.

This acted as some kind of suction or something, and immediately the boat cushions enclosed around my leg and I couldn’t get it out.

It was like slow motion as I grunted and yelled, instinctively trying to yank my leg up out of the boat cushion’s jaws, while everyone turned and stared in awe and terror, not knowing what was going on or how to help me in time before I freed my leg.

By the time I got my leg free, there were already TWO giant bruises forming - one on each side of my leg. This is the second time I’ve been on this boat in two years, and the second time I’ve gotten a big nasty bruise by falling or slipping on this boat in that timeframe.
This bruise hurts, mostly on the inside of the leg, where in the yellowing area there’s still quite a big knot.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

On top of the nasty bruises, I already had a problem with my thumb that was ongoing. Whenever my hands touch chemicals, such as the Chlorox wipes, or straight up bleachwater (which we use in the daycare), my thumb gets the worst case of atopic dermatitis ever. It looks like leprosy. :p

This was made worse by the fact that during my camping weekend, I’d consumed a couple of Luna Bars without reading the ingredients. Luna Bars have oats in them. Oats cross-react with wheat and this makes my skin, especially my thumb, break out. This is painful, because the skin is cracking open and bleeding, and huge flakes are falling off.

The only way to treat this is to slather the thumb with prescribed steroidal ointment for a few days, then slather the thumb with vanicream for a few days, and keep the thumb covered with guaze and tape the whole time.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

On top of the nasty bruises and the thumb issue, I’m depressed because of the abuses and boss issues at work, and now I have the massive pain and bleeding to contend with. I’m NOT happy right now.

Elliptical: 25 minutes at incline 1 and resistance 1, slow to moderate pace, and I STILL managed to pull a muscle in my left calf. 200 calories burned - I quit 5 minutes before the 30-min mark to avoid really screwing myself up.

Arm/Torso machine: 10 minutes on medium-high resistance. 50 calories burned.

Treadmill: 10 minutes at brisk walk (2.5 on the monitor), which actually helped my calf to feel better. 50 calories burned.

After the workout, I went and washed my car, which of course is upper body workout when handling the soap brush and keeping the power wash hose nozzle depressed. Wheeee!

I really need to clean the inside of my car - not that it’s too messy - it’s just that the upholstery hasn’t ever been cleaned and so it kinda smells like old lady in the car.

But first, I’m recharging with breakfast. I ran out of strawberries, apples, walnuts and almonds, so instead of my usual fruit salad, I blended up yogurt, flax seeds and flax oil, honey, cinnamon, a splash of vanilla extract, a splash of orange juice, and a splash of vanilla almond milk. I’m eating 2 fried eggs on top of two gluten-free waffles for protein.

Note to self: pay attention to how you feel after eating the eggs, as they are suspects in a plot to murder you, along with other known killers; caffeine, wheat, yeast, corn syrup, beans and cow milk.

January 6, 2009 Edit: Sorry it took so long to get back to myself regarding the eggs…what happens is I get racing heart, itchy and anxiety/panic attacks within an hour of eating straight up eggs. I can eat eggs mixed into stuff, like in gluten-free baked goods. But eggs by themselves cause a reaction. I stopped eating eggs on their own permanently sometime around November, 2008.

Back on April 14, 2008, I went to the E.R. for extreme pain and bleeding due to the Endometriosis, and I was treated badly and left humiliated.

I wrote a big ‘ol complaint letter and sent it to the hospital within a week of the incident. The person I complained to called back and left a message within a couple of days, and said that while she’d be out of the office until mid-May, she’d have her minions look into this.

I finally heard back today.

Of course, they defend their doctor completely. The doctor who talked to me today even went so far as to say the doctor who treated me is the sweetest doctor evar, and that she’d never hurt anyone. I of course disputed this. He told me she said she’d never forced the pelvic exam, and she’d never stimulated me to loosen me up.
I told him she’s completely full of shit.

There is some good that came out of all of this, however. The doctor told me the name of the woman who saw me that night, and he told me he’ll call my GYN to work out a care plan, so the next time I have such severe pain, I can go to E.R. and get an immediate injection of pain meds and not go through the humiliating experience I went through again.

So I sent a letter to my old GYN, whose office had lectured me back in December to go to E.R. next time I had such horrifying pain. Here is what I wrote:

Enclosed you will find a copy of a bad experience that happened to me upon my visit to Alameda Hospital E.R. on April 14, 2008. I had gone to the hospital for relief of excruciating pain and blood loss associated with stage III Endometriosis.

I had gone to the hospital upon your and your staff’s insistence, after suffering a similar episode of sudden pain and bleeding in recent months.

I want this on record in my file because as of today, [name omitted] from Alameda hospital said he is going to set up a care plan for me, should I need to go to E.R. again. He may need to contact you. More likely though, he will be in touch with the new GYN I’ve started seeing closer to home, at [medical establishment omitted]. But I still want the incident with Alameda Hospital in my file with you, since it was your office who told me to go to E.R.

I feel that the humiliation I suffered at Alameda Hospital E.R. illustrates the problems the medical field still has in dealing with people with chronic medical issues. It had to first take a traumatising, humiliating experience to move forward in setting up a care plan, because neither your office, nor my new GYN’s office, chose to set up a care plan with a hospital local to me IN ADVANCE, when both offices know about the severity of my condition.

Please be proactive next time - if your patient has severe pain and you are privy to this fact, then take the following steps:
• Before you tell your patient to go to E.R. in the event of severe pain, instruct your patient on how to set up a care plan.
• Be sure to interact with your patient’s local hospital to set a care plan in motion BEFORE your patient needs to go to E.R..
That way, the hospital knows who the patient is and treats the patient accordingly, instead of acting from a triage/panic/unknown stance and thereby making things worse.

In my case, my care plan will be that I need an immediate injectable form of pain relief if I enter E.R.. All that can be done for me is to make me comfortable and halt the pain. No pelvic exams, no long waits to figure out what’s going on. I’m on an expedited list for a chronic condition.

Thanks for listening.

George is due in two days. We’ll see how it goes. If I can just stay away from forbidden foods, maybe I won’t have these episodes. I wish I knew what I ate that day back in December when I collapsed from the pain. All I wrote the day after the episode was, “…I collapsed from the pain of my condition twice yesterday and that I’m not sure if it’s from acupuncture the previous day, if it’s from the Chinese herbs I’ve been taking, or if I’m just having a really bad cycle.”

You know what this means, Steph.
Yep, it’s another mandatory food diary. This time, add treatment and exercise to the log.

Ugh. I hate doing those diaries.

By yesterday late afternoon, I was feeling better. The bleeding had also subsided. I tried getting some work done on the astrology business. I didn’t eat very well yesterday because I didn’t have much of an appetite.

When my man got home around 7:30pm, I hemmed and hawed for half an hour on what to have for dinner.

Finally I settled on waffles and eggs, as it would be something simple. I’d read that eggs are bad for the liver, so I’d vastly reduced my intake of eggs since January upon finding out that my liver enzymes are high. But last night I had two eggs for dinner with two gluten-free waffles, a slice of deli cut ham, and a slice of yogurt cheese. This was around 8:15pm.

I was in good spirits and working on my web business. My man decided around 10:00pm to go to the gym, and left for a bit.

As I was sitting at my computer working, I felt a sudden gush. George had returned. It was around 10:45pm.
I stood up and filled a pad and ran to the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I felt suddenly nauseous, and then I could feel the uterine pain ramping up.

I downed 1mg of Dilaudid and went back to the computer room, but it was too late - the pain ramped up that suddenly, and now I was doubtful the Dilaudid would kick in in time, no matter how much I took.

I got down on the floor and tried to do my breathing and acupressure exercises, but the pain was too intense too quickly, and I began to shake. I decided I should put myself in bed, but I was disoriented from the pain, and couldn’t find my heating pad. I opened the door to the bedroom and it was very cold in there. All my energy was expended at that point, so I laid down on the bedroom floor, on my back, and tried to continue the breathing. But it was no use. The pain was SO bad.

I began to cry. And then the crying turned to convulsive sobbing.

I crawled back into the computer room and got my cell phone and fumbled, trying to press the right combination of buttons to reach my man. The phone rang, and then…

I heard a buzzing noise on my man’s desk.

It was his phone.

He’d left it behind.

There was no way I could reach him at that moment. I don’t have the number to the gym and didn’t have the energy to look it up and call him.

So I crawled back to the bedroom and laid on my back on the floor and sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed.

My man came home within 15 minutes of that and rushed to my side when he heard my sobs. I was near hyperventilation at that point. He gave me the time I needed, which took about ten minutes, to get up off the floor and get shoes on. We went out the door and he drove me to the hospital.

The hospital in our town is usually empty.

Last night, there were at least seven people in the waiting room, and I don’t know how many more in back. I wanted to turn around already. I had a bad feeling about going in. I stood up out of the car and filled my pad.

But the last time this level of sudden pain happened, I was told I MUST go to E.R. IMMEDIATELY.
So we went in. I was sobbing at the check-in window and nobody was there for several minutes. When a lady did arrive, she took her time gathering data. Then they told me to go back into the waiting room. As soon as I stood up, I filled my pad again, and this time passed the clot that had caused me so much pain.

I sat down at the nearest chair - back in front of the check-in window. The pain subsided a bit, and I was EXTREMELY tired. I told my man we should probably go back home, that since the episode had passed, there was nothing E.R. could do for me now.

Then the lady behind the glass told us to move so she could talk to other patients. I slowly stood up, annoyed, and gushed into my pad a third time. This time, it overflowed. I decided that since I was still bleeding so badly, I should probably stay. My man led me over to an empty chair in the waiting room, and I slowly sat down. The pain was returning, I told him.

We waited for another 7 or so minutes, and then the check-in nurse told me to come back into the E.R.
I took one look at how far it was to cross the room, and told her I’d no strength to do it.
She fetched a wheelchair and wheeled me back into E.R., where I was given a room with a bathroom and a box of hospital-issue maxi pads that looked like they’d never been updated style-wise or comfort-wise since the 1940’s.

I was given a gown and told to take off my pants and told to report any clots to the doctor. The nurse said she’d get me a cup to do a urine sample.
I went into the bathroom and mustered all the strength I could to take off my shoes and pants. The clot still hadn’t officially come out until I went to the bathroom. What to do with the clot? The doctor needed to know and maybe see it, right? So I didn’t flush.
I put my used fabric pad away into my pocket, put the new unweildy not-wide-enough pad into my underwear, and shuffled back into the room and slowly climbed up onto the gurney.

There, we waited. And waited. And waited.

And waited. And waited.

I kept telling my man I wanted to go home, that the pain was over and the clot had passed, and that I was REALLY tired and wanted to go home. I was also very thirsty but couldn’t find further strength to voice it.

Finally, my man went to the nurse station and told them they’d forgotten to give me a cup for urine sample. They gave him a cup, which he gave to me. I went back into the bathroom and had to navigate the pad that kept wanting to fall out of my pants - no way to secure it in and it didn’t have adhesive bottom or even a button fastener like modern-day pads SHOULD.

I got the urine sample, tried to set the cup down…

and spilled the contents.

I picked up the cup before it all spilled out, and slowly tried to mop the floor as best I could. Ugh. I should have called for help. WTF.

I put the sample cup back into its bag and set it on the countertop.

And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Just as I was about to leave, a doctor and her assistant came in hurriedly and apologetically and told me they needed to do a pelvic exam and get me started on medication. I told them the pain and bleeding had already passed, they were too late, I wanted to go home.

The doctor insisted on a pelvic exam. I didn’t have enough strength to protest further. My man was ushered out of the room and she told me to take down my underwear and spread eagle. I ordered her to shut the door to the room - I wouldn’t have her do this exam with just a curtain drawn and the open door facing all the rest of the patients in ER, WTF.
She mostly closed the door and proceeded with the exam. I was very tender and whined and moaned. Then she said she’d need to use the speculum. I did my breathing exercises but started to panic - I told her I was already in enough pain and didn’t want that. She tried to insert the speculum but it wouldn’t go without stinging pain. I cried out. She stopped and tried again. I cried out again “IT HURTS!”
She and the nurse assistant told me to hold the nurse assistant’s hand and to breathe. She tried a third time to get the speculum in and again I had stinging searing pain with the forced object.

AND THEN

OH MY EFFING GOD

THE DOCTOR TRIED STIMULATING MY CLITORIS to loosen me up to get the speculum in. I cried out louder and put my legs together and began sobbing, and she stopped.

She told me the bleeding had mostly stopped anyway, so she’d not continue with the exam. I told her the bleeding would come back NOW that she’d forced shit into me.

I sat up and

GUSH

and the pain started to come back. And I was crying and shaking and pale again.

My man came back into the room and I hugged him around his waist and said, “They hurt me.”
He came down to eye level with me and the look on his face of utter rage and helplessness - that’s when I realised just how wrong it all was, and that were I in better strength and mindset, I’d have kicked those bitches’ asses for what just happened.

So I tried to chin up, gather strength out of nowhere, and get the hell out of there. I told my man I’d had enough and we were going home. It was after 1am at this point.

As I was getting dressed, the doctor’s assistant came back in with several vials for drawing blood, and an IV for administering fluids. I told her NO. She said she’d check with the doctor.
The doctor came back after a few minutes and told me passive-aggressively that she just needed to check my hemoglobin and see if I was anemic and dehydrated so she could see if a transfusion and fluids were necessary.

I told her LOOK AT ME. OF COURSE I’M DEHYDRATED AND ANEMIC. I JUST LOST ALL THAT BLOOD TONIGHT AND YOU WERE TOO LATE.

I lectured her at this point. I wasn’t yelling. I sounded more whiney than anything, but I tried to be stern, and I told her how badly she and the hospital had failed me. I told her exactly what happens when I’m passing a clot, and that the purpose of coming to the hospital is to get injected medication ASAP to HALT THE PAIN, but all they did was dick me around and throw me into a room and let me sit and pass the clot alone in all that pain, when I could have done that on my own at home without the cost of the hospital bill and doctor’s bill.
I told her the pelvic exam HURT and that she should NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

She started saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I swear, I’m sorry…”

But to me, sorry isn’t good enough. WTF did she go to medical school for? Did she LEARN anything? She’s incompetent.

They’re all incompetent.

Nobody can help me.

I signed off on the “release against doctor’s orders” forms and I slowly staggered out of the E.R. with my man at my side. He took me to the drugstore so we could get me some Pedialite for the dehydration - the hospital NEVER ONCE gave me ANY WATER during the THREE HOURS we were there.

I came home and started gushing again - another clot passed. This time, the pain was moderate instead of severe. I took 1mg Dilaudid and went to bed.

I woke up this morning with the most searing headache and jaw ache ever. I think I grinded my teeth all night from the stress, even though I’d gone to bed listening to the relaxation tapes my friend loaned me. The headache was so bad that I began crying first thing in the morning as my man was getting ready for work. He called work and told them he may not come in today. I made an appointment with the local GYN I’ve been seeing (I’ve long since stopped seeing the GYN who did my surgery because after hormonal suppression failed to work, and I had my first episode of collapsing from the pain since surgery, she pretty much gave up on me).

The GYN I wanted to see today wasn’t available, so they assigned me to another and was told to come in at 10am.
Then they called back a few minutes later and told me that GYN had just got called into surgery. So they rebooked me for tomorrow at 3pm.

I took 1mg Dilaudid and my man warmed up my rice heating pad and got me a glass of Pedialite. I put the heating pad over my head and listened to the relaxation tape, and tried to make the pain go away.

When I woke up at 11am, I still had a headache, but it wasn’t as bad.

I’ve spent the last hour and a half typing up this entry, with frequent breaks because of the headache. I’ve had a bowl of cereal and have been sipping more pedialite. My eyes have officially had it from the light and well they’re still all puffy from all the crying last night.

I’m going back to bed. George just started bleeding again, but it seems mild at the moment. I’ve had no further cramps since about 2am.

When I’m strong again, I’m writing a letter to the hospital and refusing to pay any bills they send to me.

Now I wonder if yesterday’s ragey moment was not due to PMS, but instead due to autoimmune (allergic) reaction.

Every month when I PMS, I get food cravings. Some foods are on my “WILL KILL YOU” list, but I violate that rule once a month for some foods. One of those is “Natural” Cheetos.

Every month, I feel a little queasy whenever I imbibe on the Cheetos. But I looooooove them. I waaaaaaaaaant them. I must has them!

Well, in the midst of working at my biz, and the PMS food cravings, and in full on denial, I didn’t take time to notice the effect that the Cheetos are having on me.

Well, since last night’s episode, I’ve been re-reading all the labels of the food I have in the house before consuming it. So it was with Cheetos today. It doesn’t have MSG like regular Cheetos does, but it does have lactic acid. So that’s three things in one day that I consumed yesterday that has lactic acid: the Cheetos, the deli ham, and the alfredo sauce.

The Cheetos also have something called Torula Yeast.

Yeast.

My body gives a GI reaction with yeast.

I started noming on the Cheetos and played around on the Internet.

TMI WARNING

Within 20 minutes, I had to go to the bathroom - I had immediacy. I had urge. NOW.
Full GI reaction, complete with flushed face and nausea during excretion.

Goddammit.

Why didn’t I notice this before?

Oh yeah. Denial for my precious Cheetos.

*sigh*

Since I’ve been snacking on Cheetos for the past week, it’s highly likely that this is what’s contributed to my forehead and temples breaking out in zits, to my thumb breaking out so bad that it’s bleeding, and to my irritable near-explody episode yesterday.
As I type, my face is now itchy and my thumb is itching again, too.

And I’m feeling irritable again. I can feel raginess welling up.

Ride it out, …ride it out…. lesson finally learned… it’s okay… we move on…

Here are some links to peruse:

Many “natural” foods contain questionable taste additives like yeast extract - by Mike Adams

Hidden Sources of Gluten - from an autism site

Where is MSG Hidden? - truthinlabeling.org

Hidden Sources of MSG - truthinlabeling.org