I Will Not Suffer In Silence

I had my little three-day pity party, and now I’m ready to formulate a new battle plan.

Friday night I hung out with my husband and our friends, and we had game night. I drank two vodka drinks that night. I got a buzz but did not get drunk. I ate a lot of chocolate covered espresso beans and cheese. I was in ’screw it’ mode with regards to my diet. I felt like nothing I do makes any difference - my body is going to continue to be diseased - so why not just live my life the way I want to, and eat the junk I want to eat?

Well, Saturday morning I found out why I can’t do that.

When I woke up, all my joints were aching, and I had a new round of pelvic pain going on, and my breasts were so tender that I wanted to cry. I knew the culprit was firstly all the caffeine and secondly, the booze. I know this because Tyler knows this I have direct experience with noting how my body reacts to caffeine and to alcohol.

However, the brain weasels were still invading en force on Saturday (yesterday).

I went to my friend for a massage (she is trained!) and had a lovely session with her. I started out wanting to cry my eyes out, and my voice was very shaky. I ended up with a lovely state of relaxation that carried me through the next five hours. Alas, the brain weasels are a strong lot.
However, as I was going out the door last night, a co-worker called and asked me if I’d like to share a hotel room with her for the next training class on July 5. I was confused as to the dates, and so she called her mom (who runs the school I work at).

Get this - I thought my next class was this coming week, but it’s not! It’s not until NEXT week! Hooray! I was soooo stressed out about getting all my homework done from the last class, and now I have another week to do it. My co-worker told me not to stress, that I actually have all summer to get my homework done. This jives with what two other co-workers have told me. But the teacher I had for this last class was telling everyone the homework was due June 21, and I was all stressed to hell that it was late already. So glad I have more time. And on top of it, now I have a room to share instead of footing the entire bill for a room myself. Commuting down to Sunnyvale had been quite a bitch last time. Getting a hotel room is much more preferable.

As I was saying, I was on my way out the door. I went with my husband and two friends to see Concrete Blonde’s 20th Anniversary Reunion concert last night (OMG it was so awesome!!), but I was still such a spaz that I felt I needed a drink. I would have taken a half a Tylenol 3 were it not for the fact that I’d left my medication in the car. So I drank to quell the brain weasels, instead. I only had one drink - Mount Gay rum with club soda and some lime. It was godawful but that’s the best the bartender could come up with outside of corn syrup-infested alternatives. I should have just had the rum neat. Ah well. It did its job in the end.

I wore a corset to the show last night, hoping it would stabilise my back, because I always get bad back pain when standing at concerts.

The corset didn’t help. So there I was, in moderate back pain by the middle of the show, and I didn’t have any meds on me, and I didn’t want to drink any more booze in case the back pain got worse, or even worse, in case the pelvic pain returned.

On the drive home from the concert, my mid back began to spasm. I laughed hysterically and kept saying, “at least it’s not pelvic pain, this is actually manageable!” I tore at the corset strings and ripped the thing off, and dug my hands into my back to try to work out the spasm. Things didn’t calm down until I got home and smooshed my back to a tennis ball to the wall and rolled on it to try to work the blood flow in the back.

A TMI note - I was intimate with my husband and right afterwards, the pelvic pain kicked up. I need to note this because I am clinically diagnosed with dyspaneuria, and now I’m ever aware of the cysts on my cervix thanks to the latest MRI report. There was a tiny bit of blood in the vaginal discharge after intimacy. The nerve pain began immediately - first a tiny tickle near my cervix, then fringing out slowly to a burning sensation inwards, radiating throughout my entire pelvis. I reached about a 4 on the pain scale, but I did not take meds because I’d had one rum drink earlier in the night.

Today I’m going to review the list of inflammatory foods, and resolve to cut out sugar and ALL dairy (including goat milk) from my diet. The Budwig diet however calls for yoghurt, so I dunno what to do with that, yet. Maybe I’ll make an exception and just have goat milk yoghurt in the diet and keep the restriction to no cow’s milk anything, no bottled goat milk, no cheese, etc.

The point to the new battle plan is that I want to try to stave the growth of the endometrioma on my left ovary.

Wish me luck. The last time I cut sugar out of my diet, I had an emotional meltdown from the withdrawals.

The weekend after I was feeling better, my husband and I were intimate twice. This resulted in pain for me both during and after, lasting for a day and a half. There was some debris and moderate intermittent cramping.

I wanted to note it here. I forgot what my diet was like that weekend. I know that on the mental front, I was quite manic and it seemed out of the blue. Mercury retrograde was ending, and there was a New Moon. I want to say I was having Irish Tea (caffinated) once daily at lunchtime. I forget if I was eating a lot of chocolate or sweets.

And then of course I have lately been of the mindset that food and drink don’t even need to be recorded because the pain will be there no matter what.

So there it is, recorded - dyspaneuria continues for me.

NOTE: This post contains references to relations between a married couple. You know, hootie hoo, insert tab A into slot B… that sort of thing. It’s on topic!

I’m looking for a job full time, researching and blogging for endometriosis awareness full time, and going to job interviews. So now my pain diary is falling behind. Don’t even get on me about ReliefInSite or CureTogether - I’ve barely touched those, either. Always playing catch-up.

So let’s go back in time once again, and then get caught up to present day.

Thursday March 12 was the ant invasion on the heaviest day of my menstrual cycle. My husband brought home peppermint and cinnamon oils. We tried those in dilution, to no avail. The next day, I said screwit and applied cinnamon oil directly. That seems to have worked.

I noted that I felt better on Friday, March 13. I continued to feel better. I did go to the doctor and saw whomever was available - Dr. Tsao was good to me. She told me black stools are normal when taking iron, and nothing to worry about. She sent me for a blood draw. A week later it came back that my iron levels, despite having taken all that iron, were still low!!! She said my levels were on the low end of “normal”, but still low, and to just continue taking the supplements as I’d been doing. I backed off anyway, though. I’ll just take the recommended dose for the next month and see how that goes.

I did get to Calistoga and had a nice time. I swam in a 102°F pool, I got an hour-long massage, and I giggled with a gaggle of women and we all helped our friend have a great, low-key bachelorette, just what she wanted.

http://www.indianspringscalistoga.com/

I did get out to the nightclub for the 16-year anniversary party of that club’s existence. Had a fun time. Danced my little patootie off.

I did get to the job interview on Tuesday, March 17, and I did great, but as expected, I did not get the job, because of my health condition. She stated it directly as the reason why she did not hire me, but thanked me for being forthright.

Now, I don’t really talk about this … but really I should…as uncomfortable for me as this is, it’s important for me to be able to track back and relay this info to my doctors…I was intimate with my hubby on March 17 but I had pain and spotting right after. I am clinically diagnosed with dyspaneuria (pain with sex) as part of the larger endometriosis diagnosis, though doctors can’t say for sure if it’s because of the fact that I also have a tipped uterus or if it’s because of the location of the endometriosis in my pelvic region.

The uterine/bladder pain continued into the next three days, with moderate low back pain as well. So Tuesday was mild to moderate uterine pain, Wednesday was moderate uterine plus low back pain, Thursday was on and off pain in uterine area and low back, and then on Friday, it worsened. I noted that I felt the need to urinate frequently. This began overnight, and worsened through the day on Friday. I had stinging pelvic pain, and I also developed hip pain after walking in San Francisco a mile and a half from my gynecological surgeon’s office back to bus station. I could have taken the bus, but I hate taking the bus because I really don’t like being in that close of proximity with strangers. I had too much mental energy going on and preferred to walk.

On Saturday, March 21, the pain was gone. I did get my hair coloured, and it turned out faboo! My husband liked my new hair colour, too. >:)

More intimacy ensued, and there was no pain during or after! (the month of March is by far the most action I’ve given my hubby in a long time. Wish it could be like this all the time, with no pain of course).

On Sunday, I had another job interview, and it went really well, but again, I’m not holding my breath.
Sunday evening, we joined up with friends at a local theater which was abruptly shut down after longstanding disagreements and negotiations between building owner and tenants failed to produce an outcome desireable to the owner. People were out collecting signatures to try to persuade the owners to reopen the theater. We saw our last show there with friends, and I had two glasses of wine. When we got home, my husband handed me a shot of whisky. It had been a tough day - we were both wrecked emotionally by seeing our friends literally weep because the place they got married in was now shut down. I promised the guy doing the paper petition that I’d help him also get an online petition going to further his cause, and now that seems to have become my third unpaid job.
I have a full time job of looking for work, a full time job of endometriosis awareness blogging, and now a part time job of monitoring signatures for an online petition (we’re already up to 316 signatures in just two days!)

Noting the fact that I drank alcohol on Sunday is important because…

On Monday night, I was preparing to go out dancing again. As I leaned forward in a chair to tie my boots, it felt like my entire pelvic region was frozen in place - it simply didn’t want to move with the rest of my body. The pain was sharp, stabby, and made me cry out. The pain didn’t dissipate like it sometimes does after a wrong move like that. The pain just continued, like waves fanning out after something initially hits the water. I popped half of a Tylenol 3 and went out dancing anyway, because I’m stubborn like that.

Movement and exercise did not help.

I am here to tell all doctors, friends and family members, that telling anyone with endometriosis that you’ve heard that exercise helps - IT’S ALL LIES.
So shut the hell up!

The pain was pretty unbearable at times, but I still tried dancing when I could. I rarely lasted an entire song, because I was so fatigued and/or in pain. I took another half Tylenol 3 on the way home from the club.
Late Monday night, the hubby and I were at it again. I was drugged on Tylenol 3 so I thought I was feeling better, right? HAH. The fun didn’t last long. The pain was razor sharp and I started spotting.

I woke up Tuesday and POOF! The pain was gone.

I had yet another job interview on Tuesday, and while at the interview, the pain returned. Go me! :(
I was handling a 6-month-old baby. He’s not heavy - he’s kinda small for his age. So lifting and carrying a baby can’t possibly be what set off the pain, could it? I have no idea.
The pain continued on and off for the rest of the day.

I accomplished putting away some laundry and catching up on endo awareness blogging, but found it hard to wind down at the end of the night. I’m sick of having pelvic pain when I’m not even on my period. I’m bitter. I’m angry. So in that, I become weak and I cave into coping mechanisms. Like drinking. I had a glass and a half of wine last night before bed to chill the hell out. It worked - I was able to get in some leisure reading (oh it’s never JUST leisure with me, I ended up taking notes for later research - the books I was enjoying had to deal with stuff to see in the UK).

Woke up today, and so far, I’m feeling fine.

Today I plan to hang out with a friend in SF whom I’ve not seen in awhile. We’re supposed to go thrift store shopping. Let’s see how well my body holds up.

So to summarise, let’s put it all in perspective, my month so far: