I Will Not Suffer In Silence

When I woke this morning, it was before my alarm went off, and it was because my lower back hurt so bad that I wanted to cry. This is the same pain I get every month right before george arrives.
I got up and moved around, and the pain eased up, but then the hypoglycemia set in.

So far this morning, I have eaten two bowls of cereal, a homemade 16oz goat-milk yoghurt smoothie with bananas and strawberries, and two gluten free waffles with cinnamon and gluten-free, dairy-free buttery spread. That was two hours ago, and I’m already hungry again.

So far this morning, I have had brain fog due to the hypoglycemia, I am still wrestling with low-grade pelvic pain and the constant need to check to see whether george is here, and I’ve nearly cried three different times.

I have not pre-medicated this week. I should start taking the ibuprofen today. I always have doubts that it does any good, but whatever.

Last night before bed, I tried to do some Tibetan Relaxation, which turned into leg lifts because I have had restless legs and scattered energy and no focus going on…for weeks now (it’s part of the depression and mania I’ve been going through, lately).

About half an hour ago, I spent ten solid minutes jogging in circles around inside the house to let off some energy and clear the brain fog a bit. I think it worked, though my legs are still bouncy.

I have homework to do. I am so woefully behind on endo blogging on the main website and on the youtube and twitter pages related to endo. I need to clone myself, or learn how to better manage my time.

The spotting is very faint, now. There is no cramping today, though I did need a heating pad on my entire back and shoulders last night.

I slept for 11 hours overnight. This is the second time in a week that I’ve done this. I think I’m still catching up on my sleep deficit, acquired over the past six weeks when I was in summer school every weekday from 8am - 5pm. My last class was last Friday.
When commuting, I had to be up at 5am. When staying in a hotel, I did not sleep well and had to be up at 6am. So I think I’m just catching up on my sleep.

Tonight, my husband goes off to yet another game convention. He’s sharing a hotel room with several of his buddies, and says the total cost comes to $50 (minus, of course, food and sundries)…

I plan to stay locked in and working on homework all weekend, and eating whatever is left in the fridge, freezer and cupboards. Ugh. I am so spoiled and not looking forward to grazing or making do with what we have. I did not grow up so spoiled - in my childhood through my teen years, we had to make do, and we ate a lot of canned food and government rations. I am still haunted by the cheese bricks and the giant plastic containers of honey that hardened immediately.
Once I left home, I spent years doing what I wanted, food-wise and expense-wise, because I couldn’t in childhood.

Now I’m forced to look at mac ‘n cheese meals again.

Meh.

Today the pain and bleeding have subsided. I have only had minor pain with the occasional stabbing in both ovaries and the uterus. I’m still constipated. I have not had any pain meds yet today.

I’m still sick with a cough and chest congestion. I have not taken any cough syrup for it yet today, because it has codeine in it, which is constipating. I’m just coughing the junk up. Maybe tonight I’ll take more cough syrup.

Today I had an appointment with the pain management shrink, so I checked our financial status to see where I should pull money for the co-pay and parking fees. This is when I got a huge shock; apparently the school decided to deposit two checks at the same time after having held onto them for a couple of weeks. Apparently I had budgeted the money, assumed the checks were cashed, and continued spending money from the account without looking. This is something I always do. I have created lists and lists. I have printed my account balances out. I have tried spreadsheets and checkbook registers….and STILL I do not keep a tight enough mental handle on my money. STILL it flies out the door unchecked.
This time around, I even went so far as to print out the bank statements nearly every week and set it on my husband’s desk so he could provide the ‘checks and balances’ - the oversight - in case I had failed.

Well, he didn’t look at the balances too closely, or didn’t care. Worse, he didn’t keep the printouts with my side margin maths. He thinks he just glanced at the stuff and threw it away. There goes the oversight!

So we are in the hole - the joint account is completely drained, with bouncing checks and overdraft fees. My personal bank account has less than $300 in it (I need at least $300 in order to not be fined each month for falling below balance).

And there’s my credit cards - both are maxed out; one is at $2K and the other is at $6K. Most of that damage happened in May, 2009 for the honeymoon, and the cards were finished off in May, 2010 when we went to Michigan. Payments on those cards are due in the next week.

So now I owe my own husband over $1,000, and I still owe my employer at least $100 for a hotel stay during summer school, and I still owe the training school $325 for the last class I took.

Then there’s the medical bills - I owe hundreds of dollars in co-pays for the MRI, the ultrasound and the Emergency Room visit I had because of a co-worker wearing Chanel perfume to work - who knew I’d go nearly anaphylactic?

The school costs and the credit cards are due ASAP. The medical bills can wait.

I have ongoing appointments with all kinds of medical professionals - acupuncture, the head of pain management, the pain management shrink, and massage. I can no longer afford any of this unless my husband hands me the cash on the spot.

I’m going to make yet another list for him tonight, because he said he will crunch numbers and see what he can offer me.
He’s already paying all of the rent, most of the groceries, and all of the bills. *sigh*

I am not scheduled to return to work til the end of August. I have so much homework that I NEED that time off, anyway.

The financial mess I’ve gotten us into has wrecked me emotionally. I thought I’d planned well enough to avoid this, and yet here we are. I cried at the pain management shrink today, but not about the finances. I cried about my illness necessitating all of these appointments. I skirted around the financial issue and focused on the quality of life issue. I said I just want to go back to ‘blissful ignorance’ and just stop trying to MANAGE this illness, when it just seems that there’s no managing it.
The truth is that I NEED to learn how to manage my stress and my pain, so I NEED these pain management clinics. I just think however that I can get what I NEED for FREE through the dispensaries, thanks to my Prop. 215 certification. So I’ll make out the list of services I need and see if I can get everything I need from the dispensaries, and sadly I will have to fire UCSF because it’s a huge financial drain.

In other news:
Today I am starting the kidney and liver detox diet. It lasts one month. I am not going to do the gallstone flush at the end of the month, because I do not believe it works. I do however still believe in the detox itself. Here are the details:

DETOX WEEK 1

Night before first day - Make kidney tea.
1 Tbs. Tea mix into 1 cup cold water in non-metal pot (enamel or glass)
Heat to boiling point (do not boil) and then turn down to simmer for 20 minutes. Leave out overnight. Can be made a few days at a time, extra to be refrigerated.
Warm (do not boil) before drinking.

Breakfast: (or at any time of day) Kidney Tea: Strain tea. Warm and drink one cup.

Supplements before meal: 2 clove capsules

Supplements with meal:
1 ginger
1 Uva Ursi

Lunch: Supplements before meal: 2 clove capsules

Supplements with meal: 1 ginger

Dinner: Supplements before meal: 2 clove capsules
7 wormwood capsules

Seven Vegetable Soup OR Parsley Tea 1 cup boiling water, steep a few tbs. chopped parsley for 3 minutes, strain & drink (or at any time of day)

Supplements with meal: 1 ginger
2 Uva Ursi

Before Bed: 3 tsp. Black walnut tincture in 1 cup of water

Make tea for following day if needed

Do not consume caffeine in any form (coffee, sodas, teas, chocolate) as it is counterproductive.

I forgot to make the tea so I’ll do that this afternoon. I forgot to take the 7 Vegetable Soup out of the freezer, so I just did that now and it should be ready for me by tomorrow night.

The pain and bleeding did not ramp up again until 2:27pm today.

I had gone to bed right after a shower last night, around 10:30pm.
It was the second night in a row that I’d gone into the bedroom for a moment and just fell asleep for the night.
I did not wake up until 11am today, and I was still very tired upon waking. I forced myself to eat some breakfast and stay awake. I decided to call my cousin back and chat for a bit, and also check in on the news feeds for endometriosis. I finally put a new article up on the main site.

I had spent the second day in a row at the kitchen table, because during this cycle, the pain has been mitigated best by sitting upright in a hard chair. Strange, but I’ve learned to go with it. I had just finished publishing my article, when I felt the familiar pain start to spread out in my pelvis. It feels hollow at first, then it’s like a melon-baller is being used on my uterus. At that point I stood up, and of course I knew what would come next… GUSH!
I went to the toilet, and I think I know what caused my latest round of pain and bleeding - I had to have a movement, and I’m constipated, so things were backing up and pushing all up on my uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries. That is what caused the pain, I’m suspecting.

While I was in the bathroom, the neighbors next door decided they’d like to use the gas leaf blower and weed whacker…and of course my windows are open. I darted from the bathroom and closed the windows. That’s when the phone decided to start ringing. I ignored it.
Why does everything need to happen when I’m trying to take care of myself?
I nearly vomited from the strain and pain. I’ve been taking my calcium citrate pills but it’s not enough to fight the constipation caused by all the Tylenol 3.

Speaking of which, I have not had ANY pain medication since about 3am. The last thing I took was some codeine cough syrup.

Now that the pain has set back in, I just (2:53pm) popped a full Tylenol 3 while I wait for my unhealthy lunch of rice noodle Macaroni & Cheese to cook. I ate half a sesame seed/peanut butter/honey crepe from Trader Joe’s before consuming the medication.

Soon I will have to be bedridden again.

I spent half the day doing stuff for me, at the expense of getting homework done. Now I am in pain, so getting any homework done today will be a challenge. Enter GUILT.

Hm.

Since this is Day 4 of menstruation, and I had several hours’ break in my bleeding, perhaps this is the Last Gasp. Perhaps by tomorrow I’ll just be spotting and on to renewed health for a couple of weeks again.
I can hope.

Just a quick update to say I’ve not had time to check comments for this blog - I’ll get to it this weekend, I promise. :)

I am in my last week of the summer intensive teacher training, but the homework will still follow me for another couple of weeks.

George is due this weekend, so downtime is definitely coming, and I’m not going to be able to focus on my homework too much as a result. In fact, I fear that george will be early, because I’ve been trapped in a room full of women all summer. Last week, my new friend from school, who also has endometriosis, had her painful cycle and I drove her home a couple of times. This week, another classmate who is sitting next to me has gotten her period, and it is unusually painful for her. She’s been sitting in class doubled over her heating pad, trying to get through the lessons. She says she’d normally take time off for her body when the pain is this bad, but she did not want to have to make up the classwork.

I fear the pheremones or hormones or whatnot might be acting on me, along with the horrid diet I have kept, and the high stress I have had - all from being in summer school and living in motels on and off. This week, I have spent the entire week so far in a motel because it got to be too stressful to commute the hour and a half back and forth to school each day. I had no time to get homework done.
In any case, I have been experiencing pelvic pain since Monday morning. I have been on lots of ibuprofen all week. The worst pain day was Tuesday, when I began checking for blood, because I was sure george would arrive any second. I’d say the pain reached 5.5 on the pain scale. It was intermittent shooting death all day, too.

The pelvic pain was on top of the leg, thigh, calf and foot pain I was already experiencing, as I had walked over 8 miles on Sunday for the AIDS Walk. The walk itself is 6 miles, but we walked much further all told, getting to and from our table on the meadow, and all the running around I had to do after the walk to prepare for school the next day.
So it’s been a pretty painful week with these two factors combined. I *still* hurt from the walk.

On top of all of this, I have caught a cold, because several friends are sick and decided to show up to two social events I was at last weekend. I really wish people wouldn’t be so selfish. Yes, I know our friend is turning 40. Yes, I know you signed up for the AIDS Walk. But you are sick. STAY THE HELL HOME. I’m miffed at these people. I don’t know which one of the five it was who got me sick by breathing on me, or if it was all combined, but I’m miffed.

I’m excited to have been able to go on a date with my husband last night - he drove down to see me and intimate fun was had, and no pain afterwards, thank the gods. I’m excited that I might make it through my last day of class today, but fearful that george may show up during my practicum orientation meeting tomorrow.

We’ll see how it goes.

Yesterday I observed something interesting - I had an aggrivated bladder after drinking less than half a 20oz of Mountain Dew Code Red® (which contains corn syrup).

Usually I get uterine pain after consuming anything with corn syrup, but this time it was simulated UTI/overstimulation of the bladder. I had painful urgency for the rest of the day.

This morning, I woke with actual uterine cramping. I’m about a 2.5 to a 3 on the pain scale.
I checked the calendar and confirmed that this is also about the time I would normally experience Mittelschmerz. I usually get this mid-cycle pain on Day 8 of the new cycle, and Day 8 was on July 13. So I am at Day 9 and 10 when the bladder and uterine pain hit, and of course it was totally instigated by ingesting corn syrup. I might have not had mittelschmerz otherwise. Ah well.

I also don’t normally cave in to corn syrup anymore. I’ve been in summer school for teacher training, and my diet has gone completely to shit. I’ve been eating Wendy’s fast food burgers for chrissakes. Ugh.

I’m also not getting enough sleep - about 4-5 hours a night, and the homework load is a large part of it. Being in a room with 25 women (including the teacher) is also part of the stress load, because this group is the worst classroom dynamic I’ve seen in a long time. I actively only talk to one person in this group. It would have been 2 people but the other person I met last week was only there for last week it seemed. I’ve already had to have a stern talk with one of the women in the class, due to the fact that she’s behaving like a grade schooler. She was actively talking shit about other classmates (including for a large part me and my co-worker) and had the gall to believe no one could overhear her constant string of negativity. She was beside herself with shame when I confronted her quietly after class the other day.

Anyway, the stress level. UGH. The diet is out of control with red meat, sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and chocolate.

I’ve gotten drunk twice this month (manageably drunk - nowhere near staggering or blackout drunk).

I’ve been having IBS-like symptoms all month, because of how much stress I’m under.

I have had several near-panic attacks (the throat feeling like the fluttering/closing up, and the chest pains/tightness, and the nausea and dizziness), which have hit while driving to and from school as well as at home, and I have had one full on panic attack which woke me from sleep. I thought I was having a heart attack until I googled the symptoms and realised this is what I used to regularly experience back in 2000-2002 and was on Xanax for.
Thankfully, my husband has some Xanax leftover from when he had to fly to Michigan (he hates flying). I took one full milligram of it under the tongue that night of the big panic attack, and it calmed me down within 10 minutes.

The next bedridden time is next Saturday, July 24. It’s probably going to be a bad one.

The good news I guess is that after next week, I’ll be done with the summer intensive school program.

Oh - one last thing - on the chemical sensitivity front, I have only been using Dr. Bronner’s soap, and so my fingers have NOT been splitting open! They’ve healed quite nicely, including my thumb! I carry a wee container in my pocket and use it when I’m at school or anywhere that I have to use a public restroom. My husband filled the soap containers at home with the Dr. Bronners, too. So we have no more of that Softsoap in the house. I’m convinced the Triclosan in it has been aggravating my dermatitis.
I also took care of the chemical attacks at school - I bought Trader Joe’s cleaning liquid, which contains clary sage oil, instead of harsh fragrances and chemicals. I filled up the dispensers with it and the women have been using it without complaint, and I don’t have to run from the classroom at quarter to five in the afternoon anymore.

In the stress department, I have sacrificed eating breakfast and getting dressed just to make time for this blog entry on the state of my health, for my own posterity. I have to leave for school in 18 minutes. :(

Saturday, July 3, 2010 - Woke up at 4 on the scale, ate breakfast w/ coffee. The bleeding resumed - I hit a 6 on the pain scale.

Sunday, July 4, 2010 - Pelvic pain if I was standing - I spent most of the morning sitting and watching the town parade. Tried hula hooping in the afternoon - which set off more pain - about a 4 on the scale. Better by evening but I was quite fatigued.

Monday, July 5, 2010 - Begin teacher training class, which is an hour and ten minutes commute. I had to be up at 5:30am. Ugh. Got about 4-5 hours of sleep. VERY fatigued all day. Light spotting. Rented a hotel room with a classmate to avoid the hour-plus commute to and from school all week.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - Already under a lot of stress from the class and homework expectations. I was told upon enrolling months ago that I’d have all summer to get my coursework done. Now I’m being told everything for each class is due within 7 days of each class!!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - Students are having emotional breakdowns. I’m near breaking point. Pelvic pain kicking back up again as a result. Came home late Wednesday night.

Today, July 8, 2010 - I took the day off school to go to my first pain management clinic as prescribed by my GYN Dr. Giudice, and the pain mgmt program director, Dr. Thoha Pham. Good thing, too, cuz the pelvic pain is still with me, today. Yesterday and today it’s kicked up to about a 4 on the scale.
The person I saw today is a pain management psychologist. Her name is Dr. Katherine Bowman, and she’s going to teach me to be more disciplined in progressive relaxation, as well as introduce me to mindful meditation. My next appointment with her is July 29th, and she wants to see me every two weeks.

This evening, I have acupuncture, and I will talk to my practitioner about the herbal remedy (discontinuing it again because THREE fingers broke out completely from top to bottom, cracked open, bled, and shed skin for an entire week - started within 24 hours of ingesting the tea), and I will see if it’s possible to see her weekly.

My next appointment with the pain management program director is August 4th - to just check in and see how things are going. I’ve had quite a bit of confusion as to some Dr. Priscilla Abercrombie in the Women’s Health bulding - I thought my GYN wanted me to see her, but no one has been sure if I’m supposed to or not? So I’ll get that sussed out with Dr. Pham.

SO many doctors! Ugh. It is a sad commentary that I actually feel at home and comfortable in the presence of doctors and specialists. :(
And at the same time, the guy in the parking garage today asked me why I come around so much, and I told him I have an autoimmune illness that causes a lot of pain, so I’m on the medical campus a couple times a month. He looked me up and down and said, “You look like happy sunshine to me - not sick!” I beamed back at him and thanked him, and said I could be a full time invalid and patient, or I can live life when I can, and I choose to live life when I can. He smiled big and praised me. :)

For lunch today, I bicycled to pick up Thai food. It was a one mile trip on the bicycle, and now my knees are killing and my entire body is fatigued and feels like lead. This makes me mad at my body. It makes me feel like any exercise I do will always lead to more pain. I feel like I can’t win.

And yet, every single time, I get back up on that bike. I get back out of the house and go out somewhere. I keep fighting. It’s so weird. I get so mad, so frustrated, want to give up, but I can’t. Something just won’t let me. I’m off to do laundry, now. The laundry basket with all the dirty clothes weighs 24.4 lbs (11kg). I note this because I can carry it - normally. We’ll see how it goes today. Probably will be okay. Just noting how I keep getting back up on that horse, is all…one activity to the next, despite the pain.

3:40pm update: Note to self: bell peppers are in the nightshade family. You’ve had digestive problems with bell peppers for many years. It is getting worse. Now you are getting diarrhea after eating bell peppers. These are nightshades and also inflammatory foods and thus on your No Fly List.

ADHERE!

I had it in my head that I have been experiencing nausea for the past month, even when I am not on my menstrual cycle, and that this must somehow be a new development.

Then I got word of the MRI results, saying I have cysts in my liver, kidney, cervix, and I have an endometrioma on my left ovary. I thought for sure the nausea had to be tied to one or more of those, but fixated on the endometrioma, because I recalled being pretty nauseated in the past when dealing with ‘regular’ ovarian cysts.

So yesterday I’d had enough of the nausea - it got so debilitating that I could not read my homework anymore. Friends on facebook asked if I’d contacted a doctor about this. Uh..no, I haven’t, heh! So I did.

My local doctor’s office - the on-call doctor of the day - called me back after 9pm last night, and I asked him if he could prescribe Cesamet, which I heard about through a Canadian endometriosis buddy a couple of years ago.
He said no, his office doesn’t touch the stuff. He went on to say he did not think my nausea is being caused by the endometrioma or the liver or kidney cysts. He said he has never heard of nausea being brought on by an ovarian cyst, and says he’s been practicing medicine for many years. He was condescending and talked down to me and was authoritative, and suggested something else is going on that I should get checked out for. He said I should come in for a checkup. In the meantime, he suggested I try taking peppermint tea or ginger tea for the nausea. I told him I’ve already done that to no avail. He then sent in a prescription for Phenergan. I looked it up and decided the side effects were once again worse than the problem, and so I will not chance taking the stuff. Remember that I am the person who hallucinates on Tagamet and could only handle 6-8mg of any SSRI medication at a time without severe side effects, and over the long term, I am *still* trying to recover from the two years I spent on SSRIs.

ANYWAY, so Phenergan is out.

This morning, one of my gynecologist’s minions assistants called me back, and I talked to him about the nausea. He was MUCH more diplomatic than the local asshat doctor. He said that their office does not have experience with prescribing Cesamet, and so he unfortunately could not help me with that. He also said it seemed unusual that I should be experiencing nausea with an ovarian cyst. He told me that he felt the endometrioma was way too small to be causing problems for me at this stage. He also doubted that the liver and kidney cysts could be stirring up nausea, but he suggested I speak with a gastroenterologist if I am still concerned. I thanked him for his time and we hung up.

Gastroenterology, eh? Well I’ve already ordered the liver and kidney detox supplements, and they’re on their way. So I’ll try that first, before hiring on yet another specialist.

Today, just to say I have covered all my bases, I contacted one of the two Cannabis dispensaries I am registered with under Prop 215, but they would not speak to me by phone, and said I’d have to visit in person or send an email. So I emailed both dispensaries to ask if they carry or can get Cesamet. No one is available to take me to the dispensaries today, and I’m in no shape to go out on my own.

I do not have confidence that the dispensaries can get Cesamet.

This leaves me wondering about the nausea. So I searched my own blog, and was frustrated to find that I had posted about this 98 times throughout the life of my journal! I went back and made a category for this one keyword, to make it easier for me to search next time. Ugh.

So what does this mean?

This means that the nausea is nothing to be alarmed by, whether it’s on cycle or off. I usually had this only on cycle, but apparently having nausea between cycles - it’s just part of living with endometriosis.

Go me.

I am truly frustrated and feeling at my wits’ end by having to continue residing in this meatsack. I feel I am reaching the bottom of the emotional pit this month. I hope that means that after today, the pain and bleeding will ease up, and I will be able to emerge once again from the Underworld.

Each month that I must pass through the Underworld, I grow weary of ever making it back out alive again. I fear that one of these days, I’m just going to give up and make it my permanent home out of sheer exhaustion with having to battle this illness.

Yesterday I consumed over 1,600mg of Advil gel-caps and I think a total of 2 Tylenol 3. I sometimes forget.

…counts remaining pills…

Yeah, that’s correct.

Today I have taken a total of 2 Tylenol 3 and I have consumed 1,000mg of Advil gel-caps.

*** TMI ALERT ***

My day started at a 7 on the Mankoski pain scale and when I sat up in bed, blood just gushed forth. I am so glad that I wore my super giant fabric pad to bed last night. When I got to the bathroom, I was amazed at how soaked the pad was in just that instant. When I had cleaned myself up and got up to flush the toilet, I was amazed to see freshly clotted blood on the lid of the toilet behind me. I tried to wipe it up with a quick motion, but it still smeared. Shock set in at that point, I swear. I can only handle so much blood.
My husband came home from the gym about that time, and I emerged from the bathroom, wide-eyed, and told him all about it, the poor thing.

He takes it in stride, I think. Poor guy has been seeing me in pain and with abnormal periods for the last ten years, now. Hopefully he’s used to the TMI. We’ve both seen each other through surgeries and worse, anyway. We’re young veterans, heh.

In other news, I forgot to take my supplements so far today. It’s been hard, since yesterday and today I have suffered moderate nausea and low appetite.
Last night, my husband brought home sugar-free, dairy-free Coconut Bliss ice cream, and I ate that for dinner, heh.

I noticed that when I’m bedridden, I’m pretty much on a cereal diet, or a diet similar to one who has the flu. Sometimes there’s a load of comfort food / junk food thrown in, but not always.

Today I got so nauseous that I had to stop reading my homework, and I could not look at the computer for very long. I’d type something in chat and then look away for minutes. Still, I forced myself to make some lunch around 2:30pm or so. I cooked up some chicken and made a ‘Thai’ broth; a cup of chicken broth with half a can of coconut milk, 1tbsp chili paste, 2tbsp fish sauce, and some other seasonings. I added broccoli and mushrooms, onions and garlic, and some baked chicken. I put it all over some Basmati rice. It was pretty good. Needs to be spicier next time, and less salty.

After lunch, I read some more homework for a bit, then took a shower. The bleeding usually abates when I spend time in the shower or bath. Or at least it used to. For the last several menstrual cycles, this has not been the case. It’s more like a scene out of Stephen King’s “Carrie”.

Oh and I’m still having weird dreams and nightmares. Last night I had a doozy - an actual out of body experience from sleep state. It was actually kind of neat, though.

Tonight my husband has a dinner engagement that he’s been looking forward to me attending with him, but I have to pass. I don’t want to be center of attention when the cramps start back up again. I don’t feel like being out in public with this much bleeding going on. I don’t use tampons because I’ve always been prone to yeast infections and urinary tract infections, and on top of it, I have a short vagina and a retroverted uterus, so things hurt when they’re put into the canal. And anyway, I bleed right through a damned tampon. So in case anyone wanted to suggest that in order to get me out of the house, you can forget about it. ;)
I feel bad, but at the same time, I’d rather not move around much and make the pain worse. Even getting out of bed to make lunch earlier set off a new round of cramps, and I had taken 400mg Advil. I should have taken twice that, but I knew I was already at the 1,000mg mark for the day, so I backed off until after I got out of the shower, when I took a half a Tylenol 3 in order to make sure there is constant overlap in my medication dosing. Just don’t wanna chance getting up to 7 or 8 on the pain scale again.

The past two days have been sunny and in the 70s outside, and I have not seen any of it. This time around, I don’t even care.

Today, my own hormones are doing a number on me. I am full on with surging rage.

I was awakened by the recycling truck using its backup sirens for too long, and then idling with its rumbling engine in front of my home. Then the cramps set in - about a 4 on the scale. Then I was journaling and had another flashback to doctors who have pissed me off over the years and that just threw me into a spiral. My heart began racing and I wanted to kill the nearest thing, which happened to be my cat, who was licking plastic bags again. Don’t worry, I didn’t kill her, I just took her bag away. That cat can find any plastic bag or cover in the house. She simply walks away from one confiscated item and finds new plastic to lick. I swear, if she gets tumours, I’ll be sure it’s from all the xenoestrogens she’s licked up off of all the damned plastic bags over the years.

I ate some cereal and took 600mg Ibuprofen, but I’m still restless. Thankfully the pelvic pain has not ramped up, but the pain in general is radiating from my pelvis all the way down my legs to my ankles.
It is rare, but it has done this before. Usually the pain only goes to my knees. It is a dull ache - it feels like I have bicycled for 10+ miles. My hips, thighs, upper legs, knees, calves and ankles feel strained and swollen. My legs are restless, twitchy and painful. I’m drinking water and tea as though I’m trying to ease the dehydration - but I know that it’s not dehydration. It’s just part of what endometriosis puts me through.

I am REALLY tired. I went to bed around 11:30pm last night, but I did not sleep well all night. I kept having more strange dreams and nightmares, and I had to keep getting up to pee (welcome to having a period). The only nightmare I remember was tornado like conditions happening outside. The wind was blowing fiercely and banging things around. The sky outside was dark grey and brown, and the air was brown because of all the dust and dirt flying around. This is California, near the San Francisco Bay, so these conditions are not reality.

According to DreamMoods,

“Tornado

To see a tornado in your dream, suggests that you are experiencing some extreme emotional outbursts and temper tantrums. Is there a situation or relationship in your life that may be potentially destructive?

To dream that you are in a tornado, signifies that you are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. You will be met with a series of disappointments for the next week or so. Your plans will be filled with complications.

To see several tornadoes in your dream, represent people around you who are prone to violent outbursts and shifting mood swings. It may also symbolize a volatile situation or relationship.”

Well, I did get into it with my husband for the past two days over chemicals in the house. His hairspray (Rave) woke me from a dead sleep and rendered me disabled for half the day on Monday. And on Tuesday, he berated me after I began choking when he used the Trader Joe’s lemon scented kitchen hand soap. I thought we agreed to stop using it - I should have thrown it away. I washed my hands with the orange scented dish soap and he said, “And yet you’re okay to use that stuff.”

I read off the short list of natural ingredients to him, had him TRY to read the long list of chemicals in the lemon soap, and then put it in no uncertain terms that he can either accept that I have chemical sensitivity or we can re-evaluate our relationship, because if I have to move out, I will.
That shut him the hell up.

I then informed him that I want this household to be scent free in the next 12 months, which means his hair products especially have to go. I told him I ordered him some unscented hairspray from NationalAllergy.com, and that we’ll have to work on finding scent free hair gel and other stuff. I reordered scent free shampoo and conditioner, and I’ll have him try it out. I already have scent free liquid soap (Dr. Bronner’s) in the bathroom shower, I’m going to make sure that’s available in the kitchen dispenser as well.

*big sigh* Yeah I’m just a pretty picture, aren’t I?

Oh, and the bleeding that started off bright red yesterday? It turned into dark, sticky brown discharge, and continued on like that all day. And it went away overnight! It returned this morning, but as a shadow of itself from yesterday. I expect by the end of today, there will be actual flow happening.

In the meantime, I’m distressingly tired (also welcome to having a period), but I cannot go back to sleep because the brain weasels are in full force today. I’ve got unwanted thoughts and memories returning to my head - stuff dating back 9 or more years. It’s totally unnecessary.

I’m going to take a No-flush Niacin, get some housework done, and try to start on my homework.

If the brain noise does not abate, I’m going to take one of my husband’s xanax pills (they’re leftover from the last time we had to get on an airplane).

1pm update: The brain noise abated and I was able to take care of the clothing issue in the bedroom. That occupied me for about 4 hours. There’s just not enough room because two drawers are taken up with framed pictures that I had to put away because the wall space has to keep going away to make way for upward storage in this small place. So my clothes - clean and dirty - have been just being thrown into piles on the floor for weeks, which really irritates me.
I did get creative though, and I did purge some clothes, so it worked out…mostly. Around noon, the menstrual flow became more pronounced, and with that, the cramps began ramping up. I’m at about a 5.5 on the pain scale at the moment. I just ate some leftover pesto chicken and sweet corn so that I can take half a Tylenol 3 with some more ibuprofen.

To make a visual of it, I’m going to use the Allie Brosh Pain Scale - here’s where I’m at on her scale:

I feel like I’m being bum-rushed outta my house by Hades, and I keep pulling back, saying, “Hang on, just one more minute! I’ll be done in a minute! Wait!”

*sigh*

The sooner I acquiesce and go to the underworld, the sooner I can do my time and be done for the month.

Meh. I’m just so tired of this.

1:35pm edit: Hades took me. I’m fully in the underworld, now. OMG it hurts. :(
Six and a half on the Allie Brosh scale, Seven and a half and moving steadily towards 8 on the Mankoski scale. Inner thighs and tops of legs on fire with nerve pain that’s radiating down from the pelvis. I took a full Tylenol 3 and 400mg Ibuprofen. I’m taking another half a Tylenol 3 NOW dammit. OMG.