To my awe and wonderment, I was able to work a full day, today.

I was unsure of my body upon waking, since full body joint pain worsens for me just before and during menstruation, but I slowly worked it out like I do every morning, and the pelvic pain did not worsen.

As I left the house to go to work, I felt like I should be looking over my shoulder, in case george was going to run up right behind me and knock me to the ground. But he didn’t.

I did get cramps at work, and I did have to medicate with ibuprofen. Every time I thought, “oh no, the pain is ramping up”, I’d wait a couple of minutes to see just how bad it would get, and the pain would die back down or disappear. This happened several times, today.

I spotted on and off. It’s still light to dark brown. By the time I was preparing to leave work at the end of my shift, the pain began ramping up again. The worst the pain got all day was at the end of my work day, and I took a half a Tylenol 3 the moment I got home. The pain was about a 6 on the pain scale by that time, and even now I am still only barely spotting.

My body feels like it has been in limbo all evening - it wants to be very tired, but my brain is not tired. My body wants to be in pain but it’s just not getting above a 3 or 4 on the pain scale. I took another 600mg ibuprofen this evening to ensure the pain remains minimal.

Oh and my legs and knees are still moderately sore from all the dancing I did last Monday, which doesn’t help with the joint pain issue.

I would love for the bedridden pain to pass me by completely this month. That would rule.

For the last few months, I’ve been referring to myself as Persephone, and telling people I have to take frequent trips to the underworld for a few days each month. Unlike the original story, where she must spend 3 months in the underworld, I spend roughly the same amount of time, but spread out instead of all at once.

If I could draw what the underworld looks like, it would be a cross between Goya and Waterhouse.

Today when I got home from work, I noticed that lovely turn of colour that always happens to signal menses. Two hours later, as I arrived for my acupuncture appointment, the spotting began. It started off bright red, and is now dark brown.

The pain ramped up a bit, but the acupuncture appointment calmed that down. Four hours later, the pain is ramping up again. I popped 600mg Ibuprofen. I ran out of gel caps so it’ll take a bit to kick in. Meh. Thinking of whack-a-mole with the Tylenol 3.
Worried I’ll have to call in sick tomorrow.
Nerve pain radiating down from inflamed endo-ridden pelvis along the tops of my legs to my knees.

Gonna try to sleep.

Yesterday was the worst pain day, yet. I took a total of 2 Tylenol 3 plus 1,400mg Ibuprofen to get through the day yesterday. The pain was stabby and sharp at times, continuous and gnawing all of the time. I would estimate the pain was at a 7 on the pain scale all day yesterday. I had moments where it spiked to 8 on the scale. I had low grade nausea for much of the day.

Still, not wanting to have my warm sunny weekend taken away from me, I ventured out of the house to go to the post office and to the bank. Within the first 200 feet, I was grunting from the pain. Every single step was painful, but I pushed on to my car and drove to the errands I had to do. On a day like this, I should be riding the half mile to the post office and the bank, but I was in such pain that I had to drive it. When I came home, I was near tears from the pain, and that’s when I began the serious medicating for the day.

My husband drove us wherever we needed to go for the rest of the day. I did NOT want to stay indoors and lose another sunny day - I lose too many per year from chronic pelvic pain.

We went to a local dispensary to see what free services I could get under my Prop 215 card, since the cannabis is not working to lessen the pain. They have Reiki, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, and other stuff, but most of the classes are booked up, so I had to get on the waiting lists.

I think it was while we were on our way to the dispensary I suddenly realised that all this pain is likely due to an ovarian cyst, because the pain has been so focused on the right lower quadrant of my pelvic region, and has been stabby, and I had been nauseated all day.

Then we went on to our favourite coffee stop (Peerless - as opposed to Julie’s our favourite coffee and tea house - where we would actually be able to sit and stay awhile), then we went to the AT&T store to finally activate the iPhone my husband gave me so long ago. From there we went to Ikea to look for a bed frame but that was a bust. While we were at Ikea, I saw so many people in wheelchairs, and I REALLY wanted mine at that moment. Other pedestrians in the store were impatient by how slow I was walking, and would brush past me quickly. This made me want to cry, or worse, shout at them that I’m in a lot of pain and to leave me the hell alone.

I have a wheelchair but I refused to bring it with me yesterday because I’m still too proud to use it unless I’m in crying pain. Of course, when I’m in crying pain, I don’t actually leave the house, heh…so I have GOT to learn to not be embarrassed to use the wheelchair when I need it. And yesterday I really needed it.

After Ikea, we went to Endgame, then came back home, ate some dinner, and then went to a friend’s house for impromptu game night. I sat in the most comfy chair I could (a computer chair), but still was in a lot of pain, and had to get up and move around a lot.

With an ovarian cyst, the large hip circles don’t really work - in fact, I think they cause more pain.

When I got home, I had shooting pains on the left side, but higher up - like above the ovary or further. I used the bathroom and when I wiped, I found a dime-sized amount of bright yellow mucus.
This morning when I woke, I had clear, thick, abundant vaginal discharge, and I am no longer in any pelvic pain.

For me, I think this means I really did have an ovarian cyst, and it ruptured late last night.

Here’s hoping the pain is done and I get a few pain-free days before Friday, when my period is due!

Today I feel severely tired. I had a rough day at work wherein the students were all spazzed out over ‘wacky hair day’ and the knowledge that they do not have school tomorrow (staff-only day scheduled). I talked til I was out of breath trying to regain control of the classroom on several occasions. I was in charge of the first/second grade classroom today, because the head teacher overslept and didn’t come in til almost 11am.

Still, before leaving work, I thought I’d still make it to the gym. I joined a gym in late January, then spent all of February sick as a dog, so March is the first time I’ve been able to make use of my gym membership. I have been three times, and was supposed to go again today. However, I got home from work and all I wanted to do was cry and go to bed.

I didn’t end up crying, but I did crash on the couch for about 40 minutes, and since waking, I’ve not recovered any energy.

My husband made me dinner, thankfully, but still it did not do anything for my fatigue. Now I must note that I’m really surprised by this - this level of fatigue, where I literally want to just fall down from standing position and start snoring - that is special only to menstrual fatigue. It happens to me a couple days before my period, and happens for up to a few days after my period. I have had no notable pelvic pain in the last couple of days, but I did have pain back on March 6, five days after I’d stopped spotting, and on March 8, on the day I would typically ovulate. What was weird about the pain on those days was that it was not ovarian, so I probably was not ovulating. It was really low on the uterus, and near or on the bladder. I seriously felt like I had a urinary tract infection on March 8, and I had to take 600mg of Ibuprofen gel caps at work to stave the pain.

This bone dragging fatigue - my eyes are drooping even as I type and my whole body feels so very weak - this alarms me and makes me think my period may be sooner than next Friday, March 19.
If my period is early, then I won’t have had 19 days between downtime cycles - I will have had less than three weeks between the bedridden times.

I mean, as it is, I ended my period, then got pain again five days later, then again a couple days after that. So I haven’t had consecutive pain-free days between cycles. And when you look at the calendar, you see that I stopped my period, I got some pain the week after, and then a week after that, I am already due for my period again. That’s not fair, is it?

Here’s hoping it was JUST the kids having wiped me out today.

So it’s official - I have re-emerged from the underworld to enjoy life once more, for about 19 to 22 days, hopefully consecutively.

After whining about missing two parties Saturday night, I ended up attending yet another party via Skype. My friends in Michigan were having a party and so I chatted with them first on IRC and then on Skype so we could do video/voice instead of chat. :)

And then after that, my husband decided he was going to head over to one of our local friends’ parties, so I said ‘hang on’ and quickly changed out of my pajamas. I was still on Tylenol 3 Saturday night for the pain, though the bleeding was subsiding again. I took it easy at the party, which appeared to be winding down by the time we got there, anyway.

On Sunday, my husband did not have band practice or game night scheduled, so we decided to hang out together and do something other than housework, which we hate. I was feeling much better, so we decided to go for a hike. The walk we’d taken on Friday had struck something in me - I was determined to really get the ball rolling on taking back my body this year - so having lived after going for a walk during the throes of endometriosis, I decided that coming off of all that pain, we’d go hiking. I wanted to be near the ocean, since it was still brimming with energy after the horrific earthquake in Chile had triggered tsunami advisories and warnings.

My husband mapped out Muir Beach, and we headed out.

Of course, that’s when the bleeding and cramps decided to return.

Determined, I loaded up on 600mg ibuprofen gel-caps, extra pads and water, and off we went.

Once there, I was super relieved to know there were portable toilets on site, cuz I really had to go. I wondered if this might ruin my hiking experience if my body was going to keep bleeding and cramping and doing the “i really gotta pee” thing every half hour or less.

Still determined, I used the bathroom and we set off on our hike, no turning back.

I walked reeeeeeally slow and was out of breath almost immediately. I was afraid I wouldn’t even make it to the top of the first hill off the beach, much less try to complete the entire hiking path. People of all ages, including the elderly, passed me as though I were a turtle.

I remarked to my husband that I wished I’d worn my yellow shirt for endometriosis awareness, or a shirt that reads, “I have an incurable debilitating illness”. I felt like I owed people an excuse for why I was so slow. I felt like every person who passed me was judging me. In fact, one yuppie couple did judge us as they passed us. They were talking about fat people and not being in shape and all that, and as they passed us, they stopped talking about the subject. I wanted to yell out HONEY! I SURE AM IN A LOT OF PAIN FROM MY INCURABLE AUTOIMMUNE DISORDER, BUT I COULD GO FOR A HOT FUDGE SUNDAE RIGHT NOW!

heh…maybe next time I’ll be openly snarky.

Throughout the hike, my husband asked me if I needed to stop and rest. He was very patient with me and did not get too far ahead of me at any time. He encouraged me the whole time, despite my fears and insecurities about being able to go very far.

When we got to the top of the next hill, we got an amazing view of the cliffs and the ocean. That’s when I got my courage and strength.

I think we went two to two and a half miles all told, and as the sun was really beginning to set, I told my husband we should turn back around. We had been looking for Pirate’s Cove, but hadn’t found it. I was sad about that, but at the same time I was so proud of myself for how far I had come. On the way back, I had bursts of energy that had me nearly running down the path. Then I tried to leap over a muddy spot, and jarred my pelvis at just the wrong angle, and it set off intense cramps.

The rest of the hike back to the car was painful - I had to urinate, my pelvis hurt, my legs were beginning to shake nearly uncontrollably, and I was getting very cold.

But we made it back! We did it!

We were both so happy to get back to the car - even my husband said he’d gotten quite a workout. I had to pop 600mg more of ibuprofen gel-caps and a half of a Tylenol 3.
To celebrate my awesome trek after having been bedridden 24 hours prior, my husband took us to The Melting Pot, where we ate ourselves into a coma.

TAKE THAT, YUPPIE HIKERS FROM HELL. :)

Hopefully today was what my husband calls The Last Gasp - it’s when the pain and bleeding had gone away overnight, but returns with a vengeance the next day. That day was today.

The bleeding had gone away and hadn’t returned after my walk last night, even though the pain had returned a bit, and my legs were wobbly. I went to bed and slept soundly.

I woke this morning to horrible low back pain - enough to make me whimper. I got up around 8:30am and puttered around the house, doing slow stretches to try to loosen everything up.

I was dismayed to find that Chile had a 8.8 earthquake, which set off tsunami advisories and warnings throughout the Pacific region. While I was searching for live streaming info on the web about my region, as well as internet friends in Hawaii, my legs began to feel weak.

I got up off the couch and began massaging my lower back/kidneys. I did some more slow stretches. Then I needed to go to the bathroom. I had a bowel movement, which thankfully wasn’t too constipated.

I went to the kitchen and microwaved some leftover pancakes for breakfast. I poured some YoBaby apple yoghurt on top of the pancakes. I made some herbal tea from my acupuncturist, but I never got to drink it.

While I was eating the pancakes, the pain and bleeding resumed. All night and all morning, I had been dry - no bleeding, and no pelvic pain. I stood up and began doing slow large hip circles. I began breathing exercises.

The pain ramped up.

I started shoveling the food into my mouth so that I could take my medication. By the time I finished my food and was shoving a whole Tylenol 3 into my mouth, I was shaking from the pain. That’s about the time my husband woke up. I was pacing around the house and talking to him with a high pitch to my voice, teeth clenched. Within minutes, I was on my back on the couch, instructing my husband to help me with pressure points.
We couldn’t find the right points in the inner knees, so he tried my ankles, the bottom of my feet, and I held the points on my ears. The pressure seemed to help when my husband held the bottom of my feet. The points in my ears helped, too, but these didn’t help for very long. I told my husband I felt nauseous, but I needed more Tylenol 3. I took a half a pill on top of the whole pill I’d recently consumed.

The pain was so bad, but when I cried, tears didn’t come out. I went and sat on the toilet, and began moaning through gritted teeth. My eyes went vacant. At this point, I realised I’d hit a 9 on the pain scale.

I came back from the bathroom and tried to engage my husband in conversation to keep me from going mad from the pain. We talked about the tsunami warnings and other stuff. I yelped in pain pretty often, but carried on conversation so I wouldn’t go crazy. I had the heating pads on me, but I couldn’t get comfortable on the couch. I leaned over the arm of the couch with the heating pads on my lower back, until my calves felt like they were going to give out from the standing.

Finally, the drugs kicked in, and I became very tired. I settled onto the couch and my husband sat with me until I fell asleep. Then he went to work on stuff for his band, and eventually had to go to the studio to confer with the rest of the band on the tracks they’ve recorded.

I have spent the day continually drugged on Tylenol 3. The bleeding subsided again around 7pm, and so I decided to take a hot epsom salt bath. But first, I had to scrub out the tub, and I was still in pain, and my husband still wasn’t home.

This is a problem. But yet, I fought through the pain and scrubbed the damned tub, the shower doors and the shower walls, still streaked with husband’s hair dye. Once it was all clean, I was able to take a nice half-hour bath.

After the bath, the bleeding did not ramp up again, thankfully. I’m hoping today was the last of the cycle.

The pain has been really severe this cycle. Two things happened:
#1: Last Sunday night, I took a Monistat-1 treatment for a yeast infection caused by taking antibiotics for the sinus infection. By Monday morning my inner labia had swelled up really badly, and everything in that area burned. I showered and saw a doctor who examined me externally and said I’d have to ride it out. He suggested I soak in the tub. I came home that afternoon and told my husband I needed to soak in the tub, but did not have the energy to do a massive scrubbing of said tub.
Uh, apparently neither did he, and he didn’t care, because the tub did not get scrubbed. I did not ask him directly, “could you be a dear and scrub the tub for me?” - I just assumed he’d be a gent and see that I needed help and do this for me. But after nine years with this man, I should know better than that. I have to ask. Asking hurts my pride. It’s a cycle I need to break out of.

Late Monday afternoon, I began bleeding. At first I thought it was my period, but I had no cramps, and the bleeding and debris was light in flow and colour.

#2: I began taking the specially prepared tea from my acupuncturist - 1tsp up to three times a day. I saw her last Thursday, and she did treatment mainly for my sinus infection, but had also done some cupping on my lower back, which I’m convinced brought on some minor cramping Thursday night and into Friday.

Anyway, the light bleeding and debris lasted until Wednesday, when my actual period, complete with heavy bleeding, clotting and cramping started. I continued taking the tea.

I noticed that the pain this time around feels like a bladder infection. I stopped taking the tea last night and took 600mg ibuprofen on top of the Tylenol 3, and the bladder pain eased.

I resumed the tea this afternoon AFTER I had gone through a really bad spell of cramps this morning, and the bladder pain resumed. Could it be the cattail in the tea?

I cannot say for sure if it’s the tea or lingering side effects/damage from the Monistat.

I still feel gutted. I’m still getting sharp pelvic and bladder pains. I’m worried the Monistat did some damage. I’ll need to hire a new gynecologist this week, because Dr. Lisa Bernard-Pearl just retired from the practice this month, and I’ve not been able to see a new gyn, yet. I’ll just phone up anyone in that office and ask to be seen ASAP.

I keep feeling like today is Sunday. I’m so glad I have another day to recover before the work week begins again.

So far this weekend I missed a mostly sunny day today and two parties tonight because of the endometriosis.

Sour grapes - I didn’t wanna go out, anyway.

I just went for a slow 1.5 mile walk with my husband! I haven’t been out of bed due to the pain in 2.5 days, so this is a HUGE accomplishment! We were talking about what to do after dinner, and my legs were restless and twitchy. I began doing slow stretches and my husband said he’d be up for a walk if I was.
It took awhile to get some street clothes on, since I’ve been in pajamas for the past two and a half days. I was winded just putting clothes on, so I felt a bit nervous about venturing out. I took my water bottle with me, and my medication.

We walked down to the beach and stood looking out at the water and the San Francisco skyline. We watched planes coming in for a landing at Oakland airport. After standing for a bit, we walked along the recreational trail just off the beach, and then cut through the shopping center to come back home again. I’m seriously exhausted, some of the pain returned on the walk and I had to take a Tylenol 3 (plus, it was time for my next dose), and my legs wanted to stop moving one in front of the other for the last half mile, but I did it!

Now I go to bed. :)

As of today I have been bedridden for two and a half days. I have missed two days of work again. The hours blur into each other - I can’t believe I can say I’ve missed two days of work. I swear it feels like I just got home from work…but that was Wednesday afternoon. Right now, it’s Friday afternoon.

Hi. That’s me. I look so much older when the pain has been beating me up. You can actually see a progression - I’ve been keeping track:

If you mouse over the Daily Mugshot photo above, a set of controls will appear, and you can pause the stream and even go forward or backward manually through the photos.

Today the endometriosis pain is hitting at my bladder much harder than it was yesterday. Today it’s ALL bladder.
If I didn’t have confirmed endo on the thin tissue between the bladder and the abdominal wall (bladder reflection), I’d seriously think I had a bladder infection.
With the pain in this location, the Tylenol 3 isn’t doing as well as it usually does. The pain is not blotted out.
Sure, the pain is dulled by the Tylenol 3, but it’s still nagging. It’s 1pm and I’ve had two Tylenol 3 pills already today. I’m ready for another. I just took 600mg Ibuprofen to augment the Tylenol 3.

It’s hard to do anything. I can’t sit or lay down for too long because the bladder is so angry, I have to keep getting up and going to the bathroom. Makes it hard for the drugs to keep me knocked out, when my bladder is screaming through the drugs, “HEY! WAKE UP! OMG I’M GOING TO EXPLODE DOWN HERE!”

Ugh.

On February 13, my neighbor and I went to check out a medical marijuana dispensary really close to where I live. She’d told me about it - I hadn’t known there was one so close. I decided to put her on record at that place as my caregiver - backup if you will - in case my husband is not around and I am unable to go to a dispensary. My husband is on the list as my caregiver at another dispensary in Berkeley, so now I have two places I and my caregivers can go to.

The place looked as new and wonderful as the place I’d been to in Berkeley. There’s even a whole slew of rooms for massage, Reiki, yoga - all complimentary to the patient. How cool! At this new location, patients cannot medicate on site, like they can at the one in Berkeley. I also liked how this location wasn’t surrounded in barbed wire and looking like an armed compound from the outside, like the one in Berkeley does.

I talked at length with two different people about what might work best for my pain, and chose some pure indica strain marijuana, since I was told the butter was not very good there, and the only other edibles they had to offer contained gluten. I cannot afford a vaporizer right now, so I knew that I’d be smoking this indica strain out of a pipe. I was given a butter recipe so I can make the stuff myself, but I was warned not only by the staff but also by my friend that the entire house, and potentially the entire property would reek of marijuana in the process. Uh, I’m not okay with that. I hated it when my ex boyfriend used to make his rudimentary pot cookies (some weed and peanut butter slapped onto a wheat thin and baked for 20 mintues in the oven - yes it’s as gross as it sounds), because even that little bit of weed he cooked stunk up the entire apartment. I wonder now if it stunk up the entire floor and surrounding units…ugh…the poor neighbors!

So that was back on February 13th.

Eleven days later - last night - I got a chance to try out the indica for the first time.
When I got home from work, I decided to not take any Tylenol 3 - my drug of choice in battling endometriosis pain - because I wanted to try out this new round of medical marijuana.

When we got together with our neighbor last night to watch the latest episode of LOST, I asked her to show me how to work a pipe to smoke marijuana. Seems silly, but I’ve not smoked the stuff in at least eight years, and I’d never used a glass pipe before, so I wasn’t sure if it needed a wire mesh screen put in before the buds of marijuana was put in the pipe, or if it needed to be placed in whole or crushed, or what. So my neighbor showed me how to use her glass pipe.

I took two small hits off the pipe, and that was all it took to get me high. I didn’t want to do any more than that, because I wanted to gauge my personal dosage. I was high right away, but not experiencing pain relief. Sometimes the Tylenol 3 does that to me, so I let it go. I also noticed that right after smoking the stuff, my throat felt thick, and it was hard to breathe and swallow. I felt like my throat was closing up on me.
I didn’t get this reaction with the edibles, so I know it is a negative side effect from the smoke.
Another negative side effect is paranoia. I was hearing sounds inside the house that I thought were coming from outside the house. For example, the gas heater cracked and banged every now and again, and I thought someone was outside sneaking around, trying to listen in on our conversations…
Along with this paranoia came my inner demons. Insecurity, codependency and jealousy kicked up to levels I’d not experienced since I was with my ex-boyfriend. This is wholly unacceptable to me.

During that first hour on the indica, I noticed that I really wanted to stretch a lot, like I used to do whenever I consumed ecstasy. Every time I stretched my arms up or arched my back, I got a lot of pelvic pain. But my body needed to stretch, it didn’t want to be in pill bug stance. But stretching brought on the pain.

While on the indica - although I knew I was in pain, the message being sent to my brain was slightly dulled or delayed in registering the pain.

Compare with January 30th - my first test run of medical grade marijuana made into butter - in which the pain completely went away for an hour and a half. That was a sativa-indica blend. However, last night, just like on January 30th, I still got too high for my comfort, and did not like having to ‘take a trip’ just to get some pain relief.

My experience last night was similar to my experience on January 31 - I could give a detailed report as to how the pain felt. I was really high but could still feel every bit of the pain. I had moments last night where I was completely dissociated from the pain, but it didn’t last long. When we got home after watching TV with our neighbor, I began nearly uncontrollable nonsensical babble. I’m usually able to keep this at bay - it is a nervous tic of mine - but the marijuana kicked it up fiercely. I do NOT like that. I do not have Tourette’s Syndrome, by the way. This nervous tic began after I sustained a head injury in a head-on auto accident in 1994.

This morning, my alarm went off for work at 6:30am and I knew I’d be in too much pain to go in today. I hit snooze a few times before crawling out of bed at 7am. The pain ramped up to a 6.5 on the pain scale within minutes, and reached 7.5 within an hour.

I prepared the pipe my neighbor loaned me, and went out to the backyard to take a hit. I started off with one small hit and held it as long as I could, then slowly walked back to the house. I was stoned immediately, and could still feel the pain, which as I said, was a 7.5 on the pain scale.

Around 10:30am, I walked to the backyard again and took a big hit from the pipe. I held it as long as I could, and staggered back to the house, high as a kite. I tell you, I had the same experience as last time, where I was ready to break from the pain.
My entire pelvic region was angry and inflamed, and were I not high, I would definitely be crying from the pain. However, being as high as I was, the pain signal was somewhat muted. It still reached my brain, and I still felt the pain, and I still knew the pain to be severe, but my brain wasn’t receiving the signal in a crystal clear fashion. That is thanks to the marijuana, but also no thanks. I don’t want slight dissociation. I want full pain relief!!!

The nonsensical babble kicked back up again this morning after the first hit, and of course got a lot worse after the second hit.

I tried to get some sleep, because the marijuana incapacitated me, but I whined in pain on the couch. I then crawled into bed, thinking it would be more comfy, there.
It wasn’t. I writhed in pain in bed for minutes on end. I cried dry tears - sometimes the pain is so bad that I’ll cry, but no tears spill out. Finally, I drifted off to sleep, and drooled like an infant. It didn’t last long.
I woke from the pain again only 15-20 minutes later, and had to relocate back to the couch again.
No position was pain-free for me.

I want to also note that once again this morning, on both hits off the pipe, it was again hard for me to breathe, and my throat felt thick, like it was closing up on me. I did actually cough and gag after a short time, and I nearly threw up. I had to open my mouth and consciously remember to breathe and open my throat. This forced conscious breathing lasted for two hours, and was quite annoying to have to maintain.

Around 2pm, I declared myself not to be so high anymore, and so I split a Tylenol 3 pill in half and consumed it. The pain still did not abate. Nearly an hour after that, I took the other half of the pill.

By 3:30pm, the cramps finally went away - completely - and this was due to the Tylenol 3 - not to the medical marijuana.

I hopped on chat and told my husband that I’d just completed Round 2 of the medical marijuana testing, and had fired it again.

This could be it for me. If I am even willing to go for a Round 3, I will give the vaporizer a try - IF I can find someone willing to loan me their vaporizer, or IF I can take the indica I purchased to the dispensary in Berkeley and use one of their vaporizers. But honestly, I really don’t want to chance enduring another day without relief from the pain when the pain gets to or near 8 on the scale.

I must also note that on February 18, 2010, I saw my acupuncturist again, and she presented me with a new round of herbal medication to try. This is in powder format, and consists of the following ingredients:

• Cinnamon
• Lindera Root
• Cortex Moutan
• Red and White Peony
• Cyperi Rhizome
• Safflower
• Cat’s Tail

Today is my trial run with the new herbs. I have been taking this powder with hot water as a tea, and have consumed it twice so far today. Each time, I use only a teaspoon per one cup of hot water. So far, I’m really noticing the diuretic effects of the tea.

Right now, I’m on another round of Tylenol 3. This time, I consumed an entire pill. I am dissociated from the pain in a way totally different from marijuana. With the Tylenol 3, much of the pain is eliminated, and any remaining pain is detached - I know it’s there but its signal to my brain is severed. I can’t give you a full report of the pain, because it’s not nagging or annoying me. With the marijuana, the pain is muted, yet still nagging.

Also with Tylenol 3, I am high functioning. I am not knocked out from it like I am knocked flat and stupid after only one hit of marijuana. I am not rendered mentally ill with insecurities, jealousies, and babbling. I am able to carry on conversation; I am able to do online research and type up my journal post. I cannot do any of that on marijuana - I’m too busy staring off, drooling, and moaning from the continued pain.

Tylenol 3 remains the only medication I can use, which provides excellent pain relief and causes very few side effects. Of course, the one big problem with the Tylenol 3 is that using it every month for the past 5-6 years, it is in fact slowly destroying my liver.

I woke Tuesday morning with no cramps! I checked to be sure my period had actually started. Well, there was bright blood, and it was within a few days of the start date, so it had to be my period, right? I got ready for work, marveling at my body. I have to admit, I had a little smile on my face. I was truly enjoying this no-pain thing.

At work Tuesday morning, I only got the slightest of cramps. As soon as I began to think, “oh no, I feel a tinge of pain, the cramps could get worse any second…” I immediately quashed that thought and replaced it with, “Oh wow, that’s SUCH a tiny pain, I am so happy I can function!” And I’d smile again. I started thinking, “This must be what it’s like to have a ‘normal’ period!”

All day Tuesday, nothing - just teeny tiny rumbles of pain every now and again. The most pain I felt was while having to rub a child’s back for naptime at work - I have to sit on the floor, and the child is on a thin nap mat on the floor. I used a pillow chair but it was still uncomfortable. So the pelvic pain did make itself known while sitting low on the floor.

You have to realise though that it wasn’t just the lack of pelvic pain through most of Tuesday - I also was not feeling the usual joint pain or the extreme fatigue that I always get with each endometriosis cycle or ‘flare’. This definitely was not starting off as one of my ‘normal’ periods. Since I have been in debilitating pain from endometriosis for about the last 24 years now, I know full well what the behaviour of my illness is. So I began to wonder if the blood wasn’t from menstruation/endometriosis at all - I wondered if it was instead from the yeast infection and having taken a Monistat treatment two nights prior, which I’d had really bad side effects to. The swelling in my labia had gone down quite a bit by Tuesday, but what if the blood meant there was internal damage from the Monistat? Every time I used the bathroom on Tuesday, I’d notice that the bleeding wasn’t getting any darker, nor was it becoming more of a flow. It was still bright red/pink, and there were long, stringy clots - also not the usual for me. Blood clots during menses for me are usually really dark red, squat and thick.

Tuesday night, when my husband got home, we went out into the pouring rain to get some groceries, so that we’d be well stocked in case I did become bedridden. While out grocery shopping, my blood sugar took a dive. I’d spent Monday and Tuesday eating and either still being hungry, or becoming hungry again within an hour of eating. That is ‘normal’ premenstrual behaviour for me, as is becoming hypoglycemic.
Eating dinner when we got home brought my blood sugar levels and thusly my mood back up again.

When I woke on Wednesday morning, I had minor cramps. Since I count the day the blood shows up as Day 1 of each menstrual cycle, I was now on Day 3, and I still was not experiencing debilitating pain. Again, I wondered if the bleeding wasn’t from the infection and/or the treatment. I wondered if I’d know if my period really did show up, and would it show up Wednesday, as originally thought?

Around 11:30am on Wednesday, the bleeding and pain began to ramp up a bit. I checked myself in the bathroom and saw that the blood had begun to darken. My legs felt funny - they were weak, especially at the top of the thighs. For me, this usually means really bad cramps are coming soon. I hadn’t had the leg pain or weakness until now, so I took this to mean that my menstrual cycle had officially hit the green light.
By 1pm when I took my lunch break, I required 600mg of Ibuprofen gel-caps, and it didn’t really help all that much. I notified the teacher I was working with that day that I was in pain and might not make it through the day. I asked if she knew what endometriosis was, and she said yes, and showed sympathy for me. She told me to sit down and take it easy. The class (I was working with the 1st and 2nd graders that day) was watching a marine life documentary, so thankfully all I had to do was sit there, or stand there as the actual case may be (sitting was too painful) for the next hour, until class was dismissed. After the first half-hour documentary, the children began to get restless, so I had them all stand up, shake their bodies, stretch way up high, and then sit back down to watch the second and last documentary on ocean life.
The stretching up high thing…I should not have done that. It spiked my cramps to a 7 on the pain scale for a few minutes. Ouch. I stretched slow, like one does in the morning when getting out of bed, yawning. But george didn’t like that.
At 3pm, I organised the children who were to be picked up by their parents and herded them out the door. After parents picked up their children, I headed to the playground to see if I’d be needed for after school daycare. Thankfully, I was not needed, and I went home.

Wednesday afternoon/evening at home, I took it easy on the couch. Around 7pm, I ate another 600mg Ibuprofen gel-caps, and slept on the couch, and for a little while I even went to the bedroom to nap. My fatigue had grown infinitely between noon and 7pm Wednesday - pain takes a lot out of a person and makes one very tired. Ibuprofen also makes one a bit tired, and I had consumed 1,200mg of it within a six hour period.

And that’s where I’ll leave it for now, cuz the next part of my story requires some background info, and this post is already too long. I’m working on making shorter journal entries from now on…