I Will Not Suffer In Silence

I continue to marvel at the lack of being bedridden since starting on Gabapentin.

My most recent endo pain flare began last week, with intermittent stinging pain in the uterus and left ovary, which lasted for a couple of days.

Then, without warning, george showed up yesterday, a day earlier than I expected. Then the crushing fatigue set in.

I consumed 1,200mg of Ibuprofen yesterday, and another 1,200mg today, and managed to get through the work day. I have gone to bed early for the past two nights – I’m in bed now and will be heading to sleep very soon. The full body fatigue is as I said crushing, and it is a symptom of endometriosis.

Ya know, I have a rant.

One of the big things my ex told me he was leaving me for was because “you have a need to let people know you’re in pain, all the time.”
He was referring to me posting when I’m having an endo flare, about me having specific friends who also suffer with endo whom I can relate with, and my ongoing endo blog.

What also really pisses me off is… had I listened to my doctor years ago, and started taking Gabapentin, I might not have been in this divorce boat, because I’d not be bedridden and therefore not such an invalid in my husband’s eyes.

I have suffered shaming and guilt all of my life – first through my parents, then with the endo, and now with my ex. Part of my rage is because he shamed me by having not just an affair, but holding it in my face, in the clubs, for my friends to see and ask me about. He lied to me when questioned. He lied for months until he got sloppy. And then he cites one of the reasons for leaving me was that he doesn’t like me being vocal about my illness.

So instead of being shamed to silence, I will remind the world of my blog’s name: I WILL NOT SUFFER IN SILENCE.

More to the point, I will react like O Ren Ishii upon one’s attempt to shame me into silence.
He got publicly castrated and financially burdened.

I have been away for six months. The reason is that my husband had a physical affair which took me two months to prove, but once I did prove the affair, I was genuinely surprised that it WASN’T all in my head. I never thought he was capable of such betrayal from a person I spent TWELVE YEARS with. I was a complete basket case for three months, attempting suicide multiple times, and ending up in hospital for a week.

The good thing in all of this, as it relates to this journal, is that I was forcibly medicated with Gabapentin (Neurontin) as a mood stabiliser.

Gabapentin was recommended to me by my surgeon back in 2010, but I was too afraid to take it because of the listed side effects. I always hit into the rare category of side effects on any medication.
Now, being told in hospital that I would not be released unless I took medication, I had to give it a try. They started me out on a very low dose – 300mg – and I got head, arm and hand tremors. So they reduced it to 200mg and my mood improved fantastically.

What I also found out is that the neuropathy and severe pain were reduced to the point that I WAS NOT bedridden for the next FOUR MONTHS!!!

Last month’s cycle had me bedridden for one day, and this month’s cycle is hurting me enough that, had I gone in to work today, I’d have come home early due to the pain. Thankfully, today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so I did not have to work. Hopefully by tomorrow, the pain will have abated again.

The bleeding is still heavy every cycle – that has not changed. But going from 3-4 days bedridden down to 0-1 day is a huge, positive change.

The Gabapentin has also helped me with chemical sensitivity – I don’t know how but it has. The nerve channels are blocked in the brain and the message that says, “I’M DYING” from the pain and from scented products is no longer getting delivered. The threat level has been reduced to, “Oh, that’s unpleasant.”

So I am thankful that I am on Gabapentin, now, but holy shit, what a path to travel to begin taking it.

I’m still not out of the woods, emotionally after the affair. There is no reconciliation – he declared he was in love with this woman, WHOM I USED TO BABYSIT FOR, and he said horrible things to me. One of the things he said with bitterness is that I have a need to continually let people know that I’m in pain, whether emotional or physical. I told him that my endometriosis blog exists for the very reason of letting people know I’m in pain, because talking about pelvic pain is still taboo, and people like me are putting a face to it. He told me he didn’t like that. He told me he couldn’t care for me anymore. He told me he didn’t love me anymore. And then he went back to HER, so I kicked him out of the house. He came back almost a month later to officially move all his crap out of the house, and he tried to take the bed, the couch, the dishwasher, the toaster and the microwave with him!!!! I forbade him to clean me out and threatened to call the police. I then hired a lawyer. He is the one who filed for divorce. The proceedings cannot happen quickly enough, but I want to make sure I’m not getting screwed. I cannot trust this man to be honest about *anything*, which is why I’ve hired a lawyer to check all paperwork he sends and all paperwork I have to fill out to get back to his paralegals.

It took me roughly five months to even accept that he was in his right mind, that he was capable of hiding so much of his sinister life from me. But then I found a thumb-drive with a bunch of his files on it, and it included letters and mix-tapes he sent to ANOTHER woman back in 2009. This appears to have been an emotional affair, but it lasted TWO YEARS. The affair began three months BEFORE our honeymoon…so only three months into our marriage. We’d been together for 8 years before we got married, but according to some of my guy friends, the very act of getting married scarred him or something, and he immediately regretted the committal, despite already being with me for 8 years.

This is why I have not posted to my blog in so long. I don’t know how often I will post in the coming months. My endo is fairly well-managed for the time being, but my emotional state is still shot.

The state of my insurance is up in the air – I don’t know how much longer I’m covered under his insurance policy, and my workplace only offers Kaiser insurance, which is a crappy HMO insurance. I’ve rationed the last of my Tylenol 3 for the past six months; I haven’t had ANY in five months – but I finally relented and took a half a pill today.

So much change. I want 2013 to bring me peace and happiness. I want to start healing both emotionally and physically. I write these things with the full knowledge that I also wish I just didn’t have to breathe, anymore. I’m so emotionally exhausted.

While many of my friends get to sleep in on a Saturday morning, or get to enjoy the Lunar eclipse this morning, I get to be awakened from slumber with such pain that leaves me stupefied with my mouth agape as I stagger about in the dark to get my heating pad and medicine.

Before I can take my medicine, I have to eat something, and all the while, the pain grows ever more intense, and all I can think while being up before the sun on a weekend is, “at least I was able to finish the work week before the endometriosis flare went full bore”.

But I really want to see the Lunar eclipse, and I can’t even get several blocks down to the parking garage to get an elevated view of town because of the pain I’m in, though I’m reeeeeally tempted. Me, trying to walk a mere 4.5 blocks, putting one foot in front of the other, with radiating nerve pain. Or…me, getting into my go-kart of a car, and pressing the accelerator with the radiating pelvic nerve pain at 7.5 on the pain scale…when I’m nauseous from the pain by any slight movement. =(

Yes, I’m wallowing in the pain and depression of being a dependent invalid at the moment.

One of my friends told me she is jealous that my debilitating pain is at least localised and cyclical, which means I have windows of time which I can predict there will be little to no pain. I have critical windows of time to live my life and not worry about every minute consequence an action or a food or a drink will have on my pain level, while she cannot predict the pain – it strikes anywhere in her body at anytime, and so often that she is on medical disability and can no longer work.

While I am sad that many people, including women with the same condition I have (endometriosis) are disabled by the pain full time, it does not lessen the reality of my own anguish, which I have been suffering for 26 years. Before surgery, I did apply for disability and was denied, because although I could barely work, I could still work 14 (non-consecutive) days in a month. As long as you can work 14 days out of a month, you’re not sick or disabled enough to qualify for disability insurance.

I have had two surgeries 3 years apart, to minimal effect on the pain. I am still bedridden from the pain. I am still missing work from the pain. I am still taking narcotics for the pain. Doctors still do not know how to control or manage the pain. There is still no cure or proper treatment for endometriosis. Doctors are still arguing over theories of what even causes endometriosis, while millions of women world wide suffer a pain so severe that most men would die of in minutes if they had the same condition, because the pain is akin to going into labor every 2 – 4 weeks for 26 to 35 years in a row. Hell, there are women with endometriosis who have said that actual labor and childbirth was LESS painful than the endometriosis pain, I kid you not.

Cyclical pain or full time pain, it does not matter. The pain is real, and it is debilitating, and it is crushing. It slams one into a depressed mental state faster than you can say “ouch”, and the depression sinks one to the depths of the murk so fast, that if you don’t pay attention, you might miss critical cues telling you that the person is finally just DONE enduring all this pain.

Endometriosis may not kill us directly, but the illness is always in danger of killing us indirectly. There is no benefit to feeling jealous over someone who “only” has cyclical pain. Jealousy diminishes the harsh reality of the sufferer, making one feel a sense of survivor guilt, making the emotional pain even harder to bear.

So I wallow in my very real pain as it strikes me early this morning, while I miss a beautiful Lunar eclipse and wait for 2 Tylenol 3 to even try to make a dent in the pain, while I sit on the couch with a heating pad on my broken body and breathe those shallow breaths that one breathes when in so much pain, while trying to remind myself to do relaxation techniques and breathing exercises to get through this flare.

I want the pain to stop. I want it all to stop.

In honour of the supposed Rapture, I started my period!

I am wholly and childishly amused by this.

I am considering leaving blood soaked cloth on Camping’s lawn, since he lives a mile from me.

I was raised christian fundamentalist, so I feel a bit entitled in my retaliatory nature, being that I got a lifetime membership in psychiatric treatment thanks to my upbringing.

The week leading up to this failed rapture prediction has seen me emotionally volatile. Part of it was PMS but most of it was being repeatedly triggered by the media and all the billboards around town.

Anyway…been cramping for the past week. Pretty sure this is gonna be a really painful cycle, cuz I’ve been so stressed out with work and school – end of the year stuff coming up fast.

That’s all for now…

Monday, December 6: intermittent stabby low uterine/bladder pain – late afternoon. I had consumed caffinated tea at lunch time.

Tuesday, December 7: sharp shooting uterine pain. I doubled over twice, took 600mg ibuprofen about 2:30pm. This was after having consumed caffinated tea less than an hour earlier.

Thursday, December 9: Visit to local family doctor to get peace of mind on the heart murmur that I was born with. I was told it’s barely detectable. I passed a cursory health check and she wrote me a note clearing me for surgery in case I needed the note.

Friday, December 10: Mercury went retrograde. UCSF anesthesiology failed to call me like they had planned, to go over surgery details.

Saturday, December 11: all-day teacher seminar. One of the instructors locked her keys in her car. I chose to call my auto insurance to get the keys out, since she said her husband always has handled the insurance stuff, hence she didn’t know it. The benefit to me waiting for a road service dude was that I didn’t have to sit in a room with 65 women and men wearing toxic scents. Well, for the first hour, anyway. Good thing I’d chosen my seat next to the door before everyone else had arrived.
Got home from the seminar, ate dinner, went to bed.

Sunday, December 12: Attended the (Charles) Dickens Christmas Fair with husband – met up with friends there. Pelvic pain and low back pain hit after walking around for 4 hours – I took 600mg Ibuprofen when I went to bed.

Monday, December 13: saw my shrink, discussed fears of surgery. She donated her old shower stool to me from when she’d had surgery (she has Crohn’s Disease). Husband got home from work that evening and informed me that there would be layoffs on Tuesday. He’s survived four or more rounds of layoffs over the last couple of years, but neither of us were optimistic about this one.

Today, Tuesday, December 14: Husband’s work laid him off. Spent much of the day crying. Had to come home from work at 2:30pm because I wasn’t coping. Husband arrived home shortly after me. I had shots of booze waiting for us. He drank two shots of fine whisky, I drank a shot of rum. We spent the afternoon talking about everything financial as related to the surgery. He’s got 4 months severance and health benefits, so he thinks we’ll be alright. He’s got money in checking and savings. I have nothing – I never have anything – I don’t make shit for pay. It all goes to two credit card bills, renter’s insurance, car insurance, earthquake insurance, special-needs groceries, and Internet access.

I spent this evening cleaning the bedroom, as I was scheduled to do before my surgery. We also went grocery shopping. My husband was invited to a friend’s house to drink – I was invited too, but declined because the nesting effect is so strong right now before surgery. And well, I’m not supposed to be drinking alcohol, especially so close to surgery, anyway.

Tomorrow is my last day at work for four to six weeks. I am taking the day before surgery off work as a mental health and preparedness day.

I don’t recall if I went into details before my last surgery – about the emotional aspect of having surgery. There’s a lot of normal irrational fear of dying, fear of something going wrong, fear of nothing being found. My added irrational stress is that we’ve just entered Mercury retrograde in Capricorn on a waxing Moon in Taurus. Also, with the surgery being a week before christmas, if anything goes wrong, my husband is left to mourn every christmas season.
Rationally, scheduling the surgery at this time works out best, because we both have the time off work (holiday shutdown), and because the deductible has already been met, so out-of-pocket cost is about $300 (and it doesn’t roll over to the next year). The surgery works best right now especially, since we don’t know what kind of insurance we’ll have after this. So the timing is shitty, but at the same time for the best.

I just wish I could stop getting myself worked up to near-panic mode.

I have officially hit the “terrified beyond recognition” part of the pre-operative emotional roller coaster.

I’ve been saying for weeks that I don’t want to go through with the surgery. I’ve been saying for weeks that I’m in denial about it even happening. For weeks, I’ve also been able to discuss rationally how the procedure will be beneficial and why it is necessary. You will notice how the two conversations are mutually exclusive.

Today I had my breakdown. I am now drinking Nigori, because I can no longer cope with the emotional overload.

I am Day 4 of NOT being bedridden. Yesterday at 11am, I went to the Dickens Fair with my husband, and for some insane reason, I thought we’d be spending only a couple of hours there, going in to meet our friends, get stuff on my holiday shopping list done, and get home again to look at bed frames and get some homework done.
Then my husband signed us up for a 6:15 stage show viewing. I told him about how I thought the day would progress, and he replied that he had no idea where I’d gotten that notion from.

I was moody for the rest of the day.

When we got home last night, we needed dinner. We went out to eat – I think. Hell, I can’t even remember, now. Then we came home and waited to hear back from friends who had to bail on evening plans, which was fine by me, because I was exhausted, anyway. It was only my second day on my feet, walking around all day, and my lower back was exceedingly sore.

When I woke this morning, I was moody again. I sulked and avoided homework until it was 11am. Then I hopped in the shower. Then I realised I’d had nothing with protein to eat all morning, and there was nothing in the house. So I went to the grocery. This is when I had a full on internal emotional collapse. The guilt overwhelmed me because homework was still not getting done. I have no idea what to eat anymore because of all the foods I have reactions to, and it’s hard for me to find time and energy to put together a menu for myself each day. I wandered aimlessly in one grocery store, then called my husband from the parking lot of the second grocery store, telling him I had no idea what to do or how to care for myself any longer.

He instructed me to go to Boston Market and just get a quick lunch. I obeyed…after wandering aimlessly through the second grocery store.

I came home with a seed grinder for the seed dietary recommendations my naturopath gave me last month. I’ve not applied a single one of her recommendations, yet, because a lot of the stuff is too hard to find, and I don’t feel like dealing with the castor oil mess, yet, and well I was too stingy to get a seed grinder until today.

…the laundry timer just went off.

And I’m supposed to get back to my homework.

And I’ve already cried about how unfair it is that I can’t live like others do, I can’t eat what everyone else can eat, and I have to have these surgeries.

I can’t take care of myself right now.

I’m not managing, well.

The last time I blogged was on November 9. The pain abated by November 11, and so I decided again to try bicycing to work. I seemed to be okay, so I pedaled to work again on November 12, despite the trapped nerve resurfacing overnight once again from all the stress I’m under. Speaking of stress, I began taking Ativan again – on November 11. :(

On November 13, I participated in my friend’s wedding. It was beautiful. :)

The grooms

The cake cutting!

My husband

Me

The only thing though, we all drank for about 12 hours that day. I had a total of 3 glasses of wine and two and a third hard alcoholic drinks in the course of those 12 hours. Not bad, but then again I shouldn’t be drinking at all with autoimmune disease. Hell, I got more drunk the night before, at the rehearsal dinner, heh. I think I drank 2/3 a bottle of wine that night…

During the wee hours of Sunday morning, a virus within me had activated and let loose on my maxillary sinuses. It felt like my runny nose coated my pillow. Ugh. I’ve been sneezing and blowing my nose ever since.

I tried resuming bicycling to work Monday and Tuesday this week, but with the virus making me excruciatingly tired (like, wanting to be in bed by 8pm), I decided to not bicycle to work today.

Because of the virus, I have renewed heightened sensitivity to dust, mold, perfumes and chemicals in general. This of course did not stop me from getting super PMS-tastic last night and using Tilex diluted in hot water to scrub moldy window sills – without a mask. WTF!!

Also, the biggest WTF right now is Mittelschmerz. It hit like clockwork on Day 8 of the new cycle – yesterday the 16th. And ever since yesterday, I’ve been trying to eat all the chocolate on the planet. Tonight, I wanted alcohol, and I’ve been imbibing on liquor in the house. The boozing is in part to the stress I’m under at work, and in part due to nightmares I’ve had for two nights straight.

This upper respiratory tract infection is not helping with my stress level. I know I shouldn’t be drinking, especially with a virus going on, and yet I have no control over my cravings and wants right now.

I’m experiencing mid-cycle pain, PMSing, and my period is already due by next Saturday, even though just last week, I was just coming off my period. This so-called 25 day cycle is for the birds.

So I just wanted to let you know where it’s at – I’m PMSing, chocolate-gorging, stressed out, drug-addled on Ativan and Benadryl, and totally having a pity party over the Blue Moon Menstrual Cycle this month.

Yeah, pity me. Wah. Boo hoo.

I still have not begun taking the Lamictal. Still too afraid of experiencing the possible side effects.

I had an appointment this past Monday with my psychologist. This is the same psychologist who, by either the first or second visit with her, decided that I have Bipolar disorder and need to be medicated ASAP.

By the fourth visit, I asked why she kept pushing for me to take meds, when she is a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. She claims she went into the wrong field and SHOULD be in psychiatry, as she knows enough about meds.

Uh-huh. I see.

Anyway, I saw the psychologist this past Monday, as I said. On this particular day, I had awakened to a 99.8°F temperature, but still went in to work. I experienced low uterine pain and low back pain for much of the day, and generally was highly emotional all day. By the time I got to my shrink appointment, it’s what we ended up talking about was the fact that I was PMSing and in a bit of pain.

The psychologist – I haven’t mentioned this before – but there are two things I really, really dislike about her. One, she flutters her eyelids and often goes on for entire paragraphs worth of talk with her eyes closed and/or fluttering. Two, she rambles and doesn’t let me get a word in edge-wise, often talking about something meaningless to my situation, or trying to relate something to my situation that doesn’t relate at all. I finally have to say STOP! loudly to get her attention, so that I can TELL her that what she is saying holds no meaning for me whatsoever.
The last example of the meaningless is when she told me for the third time that she knows for a FACT that *I* will not experience side effects on Lamictal, because she has first-hand experience, seeing her daughter on Lamictal, and she was FINE.

Okay, number one, it’s SECOND-HAND EXPERIENCE, because it’s your daughter, not you. And number two, your daughter does not have endometriosis. She has a seizure disorder. So you cannot tell me for a FACT that *I* will not experience any bad side effects.

She of course wrote me off when I boldly spoke up.

So there we were, talking about my PMS and cramping and my ongoing major depression, when she mentioned that I try to get on disability. I told her I tried that already and was rejected by both federal and state.
This woman sat there and tried to convince me to play the state and federal governments! She told me to miss more work so that I *can* qualify for disability! I told her flat out that I will NOT play sick JUST to get disability pay, because in playing sick, I commit to routine check-ups and drive-bys from the state and federal government, who will make sure that I am in fact, truly disabled.
When they photograph me at the grocery store with a basket on one arm, or photograph me driving in my car, or photograph me going to the gym or whatever – I will lose my benefits. Then what? I have a stain on my record as someone who was a fraud. I may be fined or worse. Then I have to try to get a job again.

The disability insurance people do ‘spy’ and take photos – it is part of their job. I worked for an insurance company which provided disability benefits to auto workers. I had to be the one to make the pay cut-off phone calls after people were caught on film doing things they said they could not do. It’s just part of the job in that industry.

So I told the psychologist that going down that road meant playing sick ALL THE TIME, and I will not do that. I told her I have my precious 7-14 days each month where I am active and can get shit done, and I’m not going to give that up just to collect some disability pay.
She kept making a point to stress how much pain and suffering I’m in, and how SHE doesn’t like to see me in so much pain, and wouldn’t it just HELP if I went on disability?

I told her NO, it WOULDN’T help. I told her about the joy I get from the children at work. I told her about how much I love to be able to get on my bike to go to work or run errands. I told her I like roller skating and going dancing – when I am able to do these things, I DO them. I told her that if she takes these things away, I WILL go ahead and kill myself.

When I left the psychology appointment, I was MAD. I went home, changed into my workout clothes, and went to the gym for an hour, despite the low-grade temperature and the uterine pain and low back pain.
Then I walked a half mile to Walgreens and back again to pick up my refill of Lorazepam. I popped two on the walk back home. When I got home, my husband was home from work. I collapsed on the couch in tears, and told him about the visit to the shrink and how I’d rebelled by all the exercise I did. I said the exercise made me feel better, but overall I was more depressed because of the psychologist.

My husband was hopping mad at this woman, of course. He held me and sided with my every reason for not wanting to go on disability. I love my husband.

I stewed over the shrink all of Tuesday, and then on Wednesday (yesterday), I was feeling outright rage. I called on my lunch break and left a message for her.
She called me back and left two voicemails. I could not answer the phone because I was in a meeting with my school director, who wants to place me at the other school location. I’ll go more into detail about that later on, if the move happens.

When I finally had time to listen to the voicemails, the psychologist sounded shaky and emotional, and repeated herself no less than four times about how she never meant for me to go on permanent disability – she was only referring to my post-op, and going on temporary disability.

I called her back or she called me back last night, and I told her in so many words she was full of shit. I brought up my pet peeves with her, and rehashed how the convo in session had gone. She apologised again, and said she’d had an excruciating headache for two days, and should not have come to work that day. I rolled my eyes. Excuses, excuses.
At the end of the phone call, we agreed to meet again next week to give it another chance. But actually, a day after my phone conversation with her, I’m still feeling really pissed off.

These psychologists – they’re more mentally ill than I am! I swear! I’ve not had one yet who I can endorse!!!

I’ve made up my mind. The psychologist is fired.

This leads me to the psychiatrist. I saw her a total of three times; once in January, once in February, and once in September. In-between that time, she was on maternity leave, and then I’d forgotten to reschedule with her. So the third visit counts as #1 all over again. A do-over as it were, since much had changed since February. On that first re-visit, she reviewed my history, and got caught up with my new history, including the cannabidiol incident (documented here and here). The psychiatrist told me there are several documented cases, including some of her own patients, who experienced depersonalisation and bi-polar-like symptoms after using marijuana or any form of cannabis. She assured me I am not crazy or alone in this.

And yet she wanted to prescribe Abilify, which is an anti-psychotic, often prescribed to schizophrenics and people with Bipolar I.

I asked her if she feels I am Bipolar. She said she’s not sure, based upon the fact that cannabis was involved. So I asked why she wanted me on Abilify. She said I should be on some kind of antipsychotic or mood stabiliser to get back to a baseline.

Up til this point, I had told myself I needed mood stabilisers. Now that the psychiatrist, on the first visit, wanted to give me antipsychotic medication, I began to get The Fear.

I told her I’d research the side effects and get back to her.

I called her a few days later and said no to Abilify and asked what else she could recommend.
Lamictal, the same thing my psychologist had suggested, was mentioned. So I said yes, and the prescription was filled.

I went so far as to cut all the pills in half as instructed.

But I haven’t taken one pill, yet.

I have The Fear.

It’s the fear of exactly what happened to me on Yasmin happening all over again (read more about that descent here).

I just don’t want to take another chance. I am convinced that the major depression and bipolar like tendencies I’ve had since the end of July are *because* of a medication (cannabidiol), and therefore I am convinced that taking *more* psychotropic medication is NOT the answer.

Let me work through this. Specifically, let me be active and work out the anxiety and the inner and outer restlessness.

I have been to the gym only 9 times this year. I have bicycled to and from work 17 times this year.

Ten of those 17 times have been within the current school year (which began August 31, 2010).

It is my personal expert medical opinion that I need to up the gym time. I need to become an exercise fanatic. THAT will manage my mental imbalance.

Give me some time to see this through.

If it doesn’t solve the issue, I’ll stare at the bottle of Lamictal again.

Back on September 13th, I said we could not afford a second surgery for me until sometime next year.

Well, I forget, but it was sometime last week that I called my husband’s health insurance company to find out exact costs and co-pays for a second pelvic laparoscopy.

To my utter surprise, it appears that we have already met the deductible for the surgery, and some of my regular visits to the UCSF campus for pain management have been applied to the overall co-pay.

So the expected $1,400 co-pay for surgery is actually just under $300!

I had another talk with my husband, and asked if he could *please* put money away at each pay period through December to help me go through with this surgery.

I also asked what kind of surgery Dr. Giudice prefers. The staff asked for me, and I got a call back telling me that she prefers electrocoagulation type laparoscopy, and will do that for part of my surgery. BUT where it comes to the ovaries, she prefers to excise the endometriosis. I was told that she will use her best judgement and likely do both electrocoagulation and excision wherever necessary during my surgery.

She is not afraid to tackle the endometriosis on the bladder reflection, but will be cautious.

She is not afraid to check in the recto-vaginal canal for endometriosis, which she thinks was missed during my first surgery (and is very often easily missed because it is hard to visualise in the laparoscope).

So…that’s that. I will continue to avoid Dr. Cook for the time being, who is too good to take health insurance. Much of my costs at UCSF can be covered with my insurance through Aetna with a famous and renowned surgeon who does both electrocoagulation and excision surgery.

Pre-op is set for December 1, 2010.

Surgery is set for December 17, 2010.

No, going through one surgery does not make it easier to go through a second surgery.

I am terrified. I have lots of little fears and ‘what ifs’ as to things that could go wrong. That never changes.

And now I’m faced with having to possibly have no choice in taking a mood stabiliser, because I may have to go on hormonal treatment again after this second surgery. I don’t want to be more unstable than I already am, but I might have to go through it anyway (re: trying out the lamictal) – Just In Case surgery comes along and says ‘sorry, had to take an ovary’ or ‘sorry, killed the ovary by accident’ or ‘I don’t want you menstruating for three months post-op’. Any of those scenarios could happen. And I will need to be on mood stabilisers already -stuff that has been tried and trusted by the time of surgery – already in my system – so the synthetic hormone therapy doesn’t make me whacked and seriously With A Plan suicidal like it did back in 2007.

There is just too much on my emotional plate.

Too much.

Too much.

I should start noting my mental state here. I’ve been seeing a psychologist, and I saw a psychiatrist on September 14. Both think I may be bi-polar, but they do not agree on which type of bi-polar I am.

The psychiatrist gave me a prescription for abilify, but I refused to take it. I asked for and got Lamictal, instead. I still haven’t taken it, though. I am afraid of more side effects. I’m done with more and more mental stuff going wrong with me.

I’ll restate what I said in my previous entry –
Because I’ve not really enjoyed a pain-free or sick-free or allergy-reaction-free day in about seven weeks, I have hit my breaking point emotionally.

I’ve already been wrestling with what I call ‘dangerous depression’ since the end of July.

Well, it’s getting louder in the head, and more externally vocalised.

I went with my husband to a Victorian-era home showing that happens every year in our city. There were eight homes on the bill to walk through. I did not enjoy it this year. It was painful to move. My low back pain crept back in to flare with the trapped nerve in the shoulder, every time I had to climb stairs, or really move at all. And I was still in pain from one visit to the gym last Thursday.

I was super depressed.

I guess it doesn’t help that I’ve been on Soma (muscle relaxer) for two weeks, and I know from experience that it adds to my depression. I have not had a dose of it today and will refrain from taking any more of it.

After the home showing, there was the annual parking lot sale over at the famous tiki bar in town, so we went on over.
I immediately went for the booze. First time in 51 days that I got absolutely full on drunk. My husband had gone off to his sacred game night, leaving me in the company of friends still at the tiki bar. I was still going when his game session got out around 10pm. He picked me up and took my sorry ass home. Thankfully, no tears or puke or hangover this time. I drank lots and lots of water, thanks to a very attentive bartender, and was a good girl and drank lots of water when I got home, and took vitamins and advil.

I remain dangerously depressed.

Today at work, while rocking a child at naptime, I got stabbing right side ovarian pain that lasted for about five minutes. It went away until now. I’m just sitting on the couch, typing, and the ovary is pulsing a low stabbing pain. Today is Day 10 of the new cycle, so I guess it’s mittelschmerz, which usually happens at Day 8 of the cycle, but has been off by a day or three for a few months, sometimes not happening at all. I blame it on the endometriomas on both ovaries.

I bicycled home from work in 95°F heat – thankfully the ovary did not stab me on the ride home.
But I am wiped out after spending some time in the outdoors at work today. Ugh.

So this mental health thing. The meds. I’m so tired of meds. Today I started a detox diet – the one I tried to start back in July or August and didn’t keep up with. So I started it over today. Lots of supplemental pills to take with every meal.
And then either tonight or sometime this week, I might begin taking the Lamictal. I’m terrified of it. Read all the horrific side effects here. If you think that looks bad, read the side effects for Abilify, which is what the psychologist originally wanted me on and I said no way.

Now, let me tell you again what I’ve said before. I have been going through what I call dangerous depression since the end of July, 2010, because of all my pain conditions and reactions to medications.

This is also known as, yes I will spell it out and face up to it: suicidal ideation.

I have wrestled with suicidal ideation for much of my life, so this is nothing new. The frequency is what is worrying me.

But look here, if I take Lamictal or Abilify, the warning is basically the same:

Patients, their caregivers, and families should be counseled that AEDs, including LAMICTAL, may increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior and should be advised of the need to be alert for the emergence or worsening of symptoms of depression, any unusual changes in mood or behavior, or the emergence of suicidal thoughts, behavior, or thoughts about self-harm. Behaviors of concern should be reported immediately to healthcare providers.

Why would I want to take a drug that will make me MORE suicidal than I already am?

I already went down that road once, with SSRIs (Paxil), back in 2000.

Honestly, I probably won’t take the medication. I’ll get my diagnosis officially recorded as bi-polar something and then I’ll manage it myself. I’ve lived this long…