I Will Not Suffer In Silence

On December 5, I developed a mild cough. Two days later, I had the flu. I found out later from a doctor that it was likely H1N1.

A week after getting the flu, I fell ill with endometriosis pain and was bedridden for a few days. I was on a lot of Tylenol 3, which was good not only for the cramps, but also for managing the fever (acetaminophen) and the cough from flu (codeine is great for supressing coughs).

The moment I came off the Tylenol 3, the cough and flu-symptoms returned. And then my husband fell ill with the flu. And then my symptoms turned into a sinus infection. This was the week of December 20. By the end of that same week, I was experiencing Mittelschmerz.

I have all the flu stuff detailed on another journal here and here.

My husband and I began to feel better by December 29, and on NYE we were able to go hang with friends.
On Friday and Saturday (Jan 1 and Jan 2), I went out dancing with my husband, because we were screwed out of our vacation and because it’s the last dancing I’ll likely get to do before falling ill with endometriosis pain again…it’s due by January 7…which is two days before my husband’s birthday.

So I missed work on account of flu, then on account of endo pain right before Christmas/Winter break, and now I’m going to return to work and immediately miss more work on account of endo pain.
Good times. The fear of not having job security continues.

Back on September 16th, a day before my birthday, I wrote a wishful thinking post. I had resolved “to live the next 11 days as well as I can, and enjoy life the best that I can, until the darkness falls once more”.

The very next day, on my birthday, while at work, I was suddenly seized with severe bladder pain, which lasted a few minutes. This happened around 11:45am, during the lunch rush, where I’m supposed to be monitoring children aged 3-5 eating their lunches, keeping them in their seats, resolving fights, reminding them to wipe the table and sweep up after themselves, and help them open up their food packs. During the lunch rush is when I am needed by no less than three children at a time, for over an hour, for one thing or another. All told there are around 50 children at lunchtime, and there’s about five or six adults. It’s about 1 adult per 8-10 kids. For some reason, once you mix the age groups, the 1:4 or 1:6 ratio for the 3-year-olds no longer applies. So it’s constantly overwhelming at lunctime, and here I was getting unexplained knifing pain in my bladder. It wasn’t uterine. It wasn’t ovarian. It wasn’t cervical. I don’t normally get bladder pain.

Now, about a week prior, I’d had a yeast infection, which I promptly took care of with Diflucan. I got it because I didn’t shower before intercourse. Women with endometriosis are prone to yeast infections at the drop of a pin, and you and your partner both need to be clean before intercourse to spare you the chance of infection. I lagged in my duties.
Anyway, I wondered if Diflucan can cause a bladder infection, but in checking the side effects lists, I don’t see evidence of that. Perhaps the yeast infection had turned into a bladder infection? I’m still wondering about that.

So the bladder pain I had on September 16 only lasted a few minutes, then was gone. A few minutes of course feels like an eternity while it’s happening, but it did pass.

I did pretty good for the next two days - Friday and Saturday - though I did have some pelvic pain twinges on Saturday September 19. So perhaps I was good for only ONE day if you wanna get technical.

On Sunday, September 20, I woke with severe low back and pelvic pain.

As I was getting dressed, my back went out - my upper left scapula was pinched the most, and it was hard to breathe. I could feel the pain under the back of my ribs. I had no range of motion. I spent most of that day with intermittent back, pelvic and shoulder pain. I took half pills of Tylenol 3 and whole pills of Ibuprofen all day long. The pain would seriously disappear for minutes or an hour and then return again. It was crazy.

On Monday I had continued flank pain, and a cankre sore popped out around 11:30am. I went to the doctor right after work and was told I had swollen lymph nodes, that I was fighting something, but that I wasn’t contagious. The low back pain continued through the evening, and I went to bed with a heating pad that night.

Tuesday was more of the dame - low back pain, but get this - I awoke with shin splints. WTF!!!
I also had developed a sore throat, sores forming under the back of my tongue, moderate fatigue, and sore shoulders again. That day I also had some pelvic pain, and my left thumb broke open again. I had a nagging headache by 8pm that night. I napped when I got home, and my body temp dropped during the nap - I got goosebumps, I was so cold, and the house was 73°F.

I seriously started feeling like I was going crazy. But now, after reading the side effects for Diflucan, it all makes sense. I just wish I’d been more intuitive the last times I’d taken Diflucan, to establish whether this is always true - whether I always have these side effects - or if it’s something new because my body continues to grow weaker because of this stupid immune system disease called endometriosis.

Wednesday - sigh a breath of relief - I felt better.

But we’re not done, yet!

On Thursday, September 24th, I felt quick knifing very low uterine/bladder pain 2-3 hours after consuming 1.5 cups of Sierra Mist pop, which I was craving. I never crave pop anymore, so this must be a serious bout of PMS coming on. Of course, pop contains corn syrup, which ALWAYS causes pelvic pain whenever I consume it.

I didn’t bike to work at all that entire week.

On Friday, September 25th, I experienced intermittent dull uterine pain all day. However, after work, I decided to bike to my therapy appointment and from there bike over to the company BBQ. I was tired but I did it, in a show of stubbornness.

That night, around 10 or 11pm, I became very dizzy as I was leaving my friend’s house. The pelvic pain had ramped up while I was hanging out with my friends, and so I’d taken 600mg Ibuprofen. I don’t think the dizziness was from that, since I take Ibuprofen so frequently.

On Saturday - yesterday - our town was experiencing another heat wave. Despite being 87°F outside, my husband and I shopped at some local Halloween stores. Yesterday I consumed a white chocolate raspberry blended mocha (with cow’s milk) because I was really fatigued and craving the caffeine (HELLO PMS!).
Last night my husband and I were intimate and right afterwards, I felt nauseated, and then the cramps started. I checked myself and there was brown blood. I thought for sure I’d started my period. I went to bed wearing a pad but the bleeding stopped, never touching the pad.

Today I’ve been seriously tired. I slept for about 10 hours and haven’t wanted to get up all day. The low level nausea has been with me all day. I’ve had the feeling that my period is starting but every time I check, it’s not there. I’ve had annoying low back and pelvic pain all day.

It’s nearing 5pm and I’ve been on the couch the entire day. I had planned to attend a birthday party for a friend, a parking lot sale, and then see another friend play with his band tonight.

I’ve missed everything so far but the band, and I’m not sure I’m up for that, either.

So let’s recap - where did those 11 days go that I was so excited to live for?

Of those 11 days, I got to enjoy 2 days pain-free.

2 days.

Out of the past 27 days, I have enjoyed roughly 8 days pain-free.

I have not gone back to yoga class, and I’ve been in too much pain to do the yoga video that I own.

I have continually doing slow stretches and fighting through the pain. I often do the wide hip circles when not out in public (cuz doing those makes one look like a pole dancer, heh) in an attempt to ease the low back and pelvic pain.

To anyone who doesn’t suffer from chronic pain, I hope this gives you an educated visual, and I hope you understand it a bit better when I tell you just how tired and depressed I am.
Just because I have high hopes, doesn’t mean my body wishes to cooperate.

Oh and to those of you who still think wishful thinking and being positive will end my pain, you can go to hell.

On Saturday, my hubby did get me out of the house. We went to a nursery to scope out starter beds, raised beds, herbs, vegetables, soil and all the rest of it. I was bleary-eyed from the pain and Tylenol 3, but determined to take a walk through the calm nursery garden and just be outdoors for a bit.

After we were done there, my hubby needed to pick up his car, which had been getting detailed. He’d driven my car to get us to the nursery. I told him it’s only a couple blocks from the car detail place back to our house - just drive us from the nursery to his car, he can get his car, then I will drive my car the couple blocks back home.
We got to the car detailing place and he had to wait for his car - it wasn’t done yet after all. I just decided to wait, too. I slept in my car for about 15 minutes til he pulled up alongside me in his car. Then we drove back home.

Hubby wanted to go to a second nursery to encourage me to get out of the house and start on that flower bed cuz he knows how depressed I get immediately upon becoming bedridden each month. I told him that even that short trip to the nursery and the wait at the car detailing place was murder on me and my bladder as well. I told him with how heavy it is right now, I need to be near the bathroom. I went and knelt against the bed. Hubby came after me, gently coaxing me to try again. I was so tired from the meds. So depressed that my weekend fun was taken from me.
I drew a deep breath and hauled myself up off the floor and bed, and off we went to nursery #2.

The second place wasn’t as nice as the first, but still offered some tranquility for the state I was in, and had some very fragrant white roses. I showed my hubby how to get sniffed by a morning glory (the petals are so soft and wispy that when you sniff them, they adhere to your nostril, thus sniffing you back!) After browsing there for a short bit, my hubby took me to Baskin Robbins for a Clown Cone - something that was a favourite treat for me when I was a little kid.
I have to say, now that I’m all grown up, Baskin Robbins ice cream is rather unmentionable, especially since we have Tucker’s homemade super creamed ice cream parlour nearby.

After ice cream, we came back home, ate dinner, and hung out. I think I went to bed early. Can’t remember.

On Sunday I spent the entire day on the couch, only getting up to go to the bathroom or shower. I researched endo stuff all damned day. I was on a mission. A stoned Tylenol 3 induced mission. I also spent the day trying to locate a substitute teacher for me on Monday, because I knew the pain would be too much for me to handle. Around 10pm I finally got a reliable call back from someone who said they’d sub for me. I went to bed after 1am but woke up around 8am from the pain. I took Tylenol 3 all day again. That cold I’ve been trying not to catch from the kids at work is really really trying to get me - my throat has been sore all day today.
Today was the same as yesterday - all day on the couch, researching endo stuff.

My neighbor was very kind and brought me some ice cream today. It was 88°F outside and 76°F in the house today but I wasn’t really bothered by the heat until late afternoon. It was very sweet of her to bring me the ice cream. :)

Tomorrow I return to work and hope to get through the entire day pain-free.

If so, clock resets for another 23-25 days, minus any mid-cycle pain that may occur (usually 8 days after my cycle ends).

There’s no catching a break this month.

I need to go back in time to the last cycle before I record this month’s cycle, because I didn’t do an adequate enough job in my journal.

Back on April 2nd, I mentioned that I pulled the “grin and bear it” routine and toughed out the pain. That’s all I wrote to you about. However, I did make notes in my calendar, so I’ll record those here now.

Friday, April 3, 2009: The pain and bleeding ramped up about 11:20am. I had been observing children at the school I’d just been hired at. I was to report to training that following Monday. My lower back had been killing me for most of the time I was there observing (about 3 hours). When I got home, I popped Tylenol 3 and enforced bedrest for the rest of the day.

Saturday, April 4, 2009: The pain was bad during the early part of the day, but subsided by 4pm. I enforced bedrest. I bled heavy all day. There were occasional sharp pains in both of my ovaries, but the pain was mostly on the right and lower right quadrant.

Sunday, April 5, 2009: The pain was mild and the bleeding moderate. I had anxiety all day over whether I’d be able to go to work on Monday, because I’d only been bedridden for part of Friday and most of Saturday. By nighttime, I was only spotting again.

Monday, April 6, 2009: The spotting and pain ramped up at 1pm. I also got a moderate headache and a feeling of sugar crash, though I’d just eaten some gluten-free mac ‘n cheese and some cornish hen for lunch at work. I took half a Tylenol 3 and within the hour I felt a little better, but the mild pelvic pain stuck with me after that, and moderate back pain continued into the 6pm hour.

For the rest of that week - my first week on the job - I experienced moderate low back pain. I wasn’t sure if it was leftover from george, or if it was from the cervicitis, or hell, if it was from all the activity I was getting from working around children again.

I went from george pain on Monday to low back pain for the rest of the week, which ceased by Sunday, April 12th but was replaced with a bad yeast infection from the antibiotics I’d been on to treat the cervicitis. On Sunday night, I started a 7-day regimen of Monistat to make sure I wiped out the yeast infection. I had two and a half days pain-free but having to deal with wearing a pad from the nasty Monistat treatment, when Wednesday I came down with a cold. I thought it was severe dehydration and perhaps it was - but it also kicked my immune system in the junk and allowed a virus to take me down. The very next day, April 16, I had a sore throat and generally didn’t feel well. Same thing on Friday, though I attended a friend’s wedding anyway.

I woke up Saturday, April 18 feeling like a Mac truck had run over me. I was full on sick.

Because I’ve been sick as a dog with a virus caught from the children at work during my first week on the job, my body doesn’t seem to have remembered that it needed to be shutting down because of george approaching. So I had none of the usual early warning signs - no low back pain, no uterine pain, no major ovarian twinges.

Friday, April 24, 2009: I got up for work around 6:45am. I noticed the faintest pink spotting but decided I would not dwell on it, because george was due in two days, on Sunday. “NOT today. So he simply CAN’T be here”, I thought.

I popped 600mg ibuprofen and bicycled to work.

Around 10am, I was surprised to see moderate red spotting. I was not prepared. Whoops. So much for denial. I began to have mild cramps but I decided to continue to ignore the situation, because after all, george was due Sunday, NOT today.

At 1pm I was finally able to sit down and eat lunch. I’d been go go go since awakening. That’s my job, after all. On my feet all day, keeping up with children aged three to five. I was dismayed to see actual red bleeding rather than spotting. There’d been no ramp up. There’d been no dark brown spotting for a day or three. What the hell!
I decided that I could make it for four more hours like this without it leaking through my pants. The cramps REALLY wanted to come through, but again, I told myself I didn’t have time for this. I went back to the break room and finished preparing my lunch.
That’s when the head teacher came in and announced we’re having a meeting, and I was needed.
Great. I wasn’t told we’d have a meeting EVERY Friday on my lunch break like this. Dammit!!! So off I went again, go go go, and the cramps abated once more.

I was happy that this denial thing was working so well for me.
After work, I bicycled home. I didn’t have any cramps, but my body was VERY exhausted like it gets when george is around. When I got home, I let out a sigh. I was finally able to relax for a few minutes.

That’s when the pain tried to ramp up again.

So I sighed again, then said LOOK, I’M BUSY. I’LL MAKE SURE I STAY BUSY SO YOU DON’T BOTHER ME.

And with that, I got into my car and told myself I had to hurry and go go go to get my dinner, then get to my next job (babysitting for a family in town). But this time, george wasn’t listening, so I popped a half of a Tylenol 3 to make sure he listened.
That seemed to do the trick.

I didn’t have to pop another half Tylenol 3 for three hours.

I took an hour nap from 9pm - 10pm while the baby slept. The parents returned home around 11:30pm.

By the time I got home, I’d worked myself into such a state over the whole psychology denial thing, that I was hyper. I couldn’t calm down. I told my husband I was actually afraid to calm down, because then the pain would arrive.
Then I realised I’d bled through my fabric pad and through my underwear, and anxiety took hold. I called out to my husband for help, and declared that I should start leaving extra underwear in the bathroom during my period.
He convinced me that I really should calm down, that I needed my rest, that I didn’t have to be to my next job until 6pm Saturday.

The moment I settled into bed, my flow became heavy again.
I had minor cramping on and off during the night, but was mostly just heavy.

The pain level for me stayed at about 3 - 4 on the scale.

Saturday, April 25, 2009: I spent the day popping half Tylenol 3 pills every one to three hours, just to make sure the pain didn’t take over. I forced myself to take a nap for an hour, from 3pm - 4pm, so I’d be rested for work. I ate dinner and drove rather than bicycled to work (babysitting for another family in town). When I woke from nap, the pain was about a 6.5 on the pain scale. This dismayed me, since I had to be to work in an hour and fifteen minutes. The pain remained the same even as I left for work, but I used the same tactic as I’d done on Friday - “I can’t feel you, I don’t have time for this…”
The bleeding was still heavy. The parents left me with a sleeping baby at 7pm - it took an hour for them to finish getting ready and put the baby down cuz he’d had a long day. I set up camp in the dining room to work on my teacher practicum and that’s when I began to have lots of sharp, jarring pain on the lower left quadrant/ovary. It was enough to make me gasp at times. At 7:16pm for example, I had three sharp pains in succession that took my breath away and made me wheeze from the pain, and a fourth that was much less severe. Then a minute later, another sharp pain that made me wince.
I had taken half a Tylenol 3 at 5:30pm and didn’t want to take any more if I could help it.
I got two more stabs of pain - 7pm and 9:22pm. Another stab at 9:35pm. Then at 9:37pm, I got a right side stab. This continued on and off until I got home from babysitting around 12:30am.
The bleeding was heavy the entire day and continued throughout the night. I took a whole Tylenol 3 and went to bed.
Around 3:30am, I woke with a major coughing/hacking fit, and almost threw up. I had to flush my nose and throat with salt water, and things eased up. But all that trauma of coughing so violently brought on lower back spasms and cramps (roughly a 7.5 on the pain scale). I took a teaspoonful of codeine cough syrup, warmed a heating pad, and went back to bed. The cramps abated within an hour.

Sunday, April 26, 2009: Still bleeding heavy. My uterus felt raw and gutted, and my legs were shaky. I ate some breakfast and was just about to take a Tylenol 3 when the pain got really bad (I’d say 7.5-8 on the scale). I went to the bathroom, and actually, having a bowel movement eased everything up. The pain passed. I told myself I’d take it easy and enjoy bedrest all day, but then I realised that I didn’t have any clean clothes for the coming work week, and my husband was off at yet another game convention, so he couldn’t help me. I popped a whole Tylenol 3 and set off to do my laundry. I moved very slowly and methodically. The pain ramped up a few times but never enough to make me cry.
I didn’t finally get into bed until 3pm, but at least it’s something. I will try to remain bedridden for the rest of the day.

So let’s summarise the month of April:

Now to address the last bit…My monthly cycle has been shortening steadily since February, 2009.

In February, george was 3 days early

In March, george was 1 day early

In April, george happened twice. On April 2, he was 1 day early, and on April 24, he was 2 days early.

My cycle is still five days long each month, but for some reason, it’s cutting back from happening every 26 days to every 23-25 days.

The last time I had this profound a change in the length of time between my cycle each month, I was about 25 years old. I went from a seven-day cycle to a five to six day cycle back then. It took me about six months before I realised what was happening.

This earliness of course has screwed with our honeymoon plans. I’ve had seven whole days removed because of george being early a day here and a day there since February. This means the entire last week, or the middle of our honeymoon, will be messed up, because george keeps showing up early each month.

Is this perimenopause? Is this something else? The mysterious cervicitis occurrence has never been explained. What’s going on with my body!?!??

I’ve not journaled about this until now because I wanted to make sure I got the test results back, first. And well, it was humiliating to have to go through this.

I alluded to my problem back on March 25 and March 26.

Well, on March 28 when the pain happened again during and after intimacy, I made an emergency trip to the doctor’s office.
I wasn’t due for my annual pap smear until April 20, but was told I should have it done, NOW. I want to let it be known that this is the same doctor I complained about in October, 2007 and in January, 2009. But she was the only doctor available who could see me on such short notice that day, who had access to my medical file relating to endometriosis.

During the pap smear, I was also tested for sexually transmitted diseases (STD), and was told that the test results would be due back on Thursday, April 2.

After the exam, I got dressed and waited. The doctor came back in and said to me, “How do I say this tactfully…uh…are you sure your boyfriend hasn’t been stepping out?”

First of all, he’s not my boyfriend, he’s my HUSBAND, and NO, he hasn’t been sleeping with other people. I was infuriated that this would be the first thing a doctor would suspect, given MY personal medical history, which this office has been made aware of several times.

She told me the reason why she asked the question was that the pap smear came back positive for cervicitis. I asked her if there was anything else that might cause cervicitis, because I know I don’t have a friggin STD. I cited examples of clean pap smears three times within the last ten years. The doctor shrugged and said she didn’t know of any other cause of cervicitis. What a crock of shit.

So I went home and researched it and found that a latex condom allergy could lead one to cervicitis. I thought about it some more and decided that digital play with improperly cleaned fingers and fingernails could lead me to cervicitis, as could bumping up against the anus during sexual intercourse. In my case, these are all plausible, because I am so sensitive to infections.

I called my gynecologist on Monday, March 30 to let her know I had my annual pap smear early because of an infection. We talked about everything that might lead to cervicitis. She totally agreed with me that digital play with improperly cleaned fingers and fingernails could lead me to cervicitis, as could bumping up against the anus during sexual intercourse. My gynecologist was really upset with the doctor who saw me on Saturday, saying she should have put me on antibiotics right away, to avoid the infection spreading to the fallopian tubes and ovaries and causing permanent damage. She called in doxycycline and flagyl over the phone, and I started on the antibiotics on Tuesday.

Two days later, I saw my gynecologist and she did a follow-up pelvic exam. This time I had no pain. She performed additional testing and told me the antibiotics were obviously working.

Despite knowing the above-mentioned things about my reproductive health, the STD test results from my primary care doctor were not back by Thursday, April 2.
I called on Thursday the 2nd, Friday the 3rd, Saturday the 4th, Monday the 6th, Tuesday the 7th, and Wednesday the 8th, and the goddamned results were not in. I grew angrier with my primary care doctor because she’d not checked in on me once that whole week. I would have been made to suffer an additional 12 days had I not spoken to my gynecologist.

Sometime after 8:00 at night on Thursday, April 8, the primary doctor called me to tell me that the STD tests came back negative for gonnorhea and chlamydia (DUH, AS EXPECTED), and that the pap showed no abnormal cells, no pre-cancer worries, nothing.

She stated that she doesn’t know what’s wrong with me, and to please follow up with my gynecologist.

I took the opportunity to tell her my gyn was already in the loop and was not happy with her decision to not put me on antibiotics right away. The doctor said she’d had a reason at the time for not putting me on antibiotics, but had since forgotten it.
Nice, eh?
I repeated what my gyn said - that she was afraid of permanent damage to the tubes and ovaries if the infection were allowed to proceed, and given that the lab results didn’t come back for two weeks, this is a HUGE problem for my health and safety. The doctor apologised but didn’t seem sincere in her apology.

Because I took a new job, I can no longer make my appointment with the gynecological oncologist or my endocrinologist. I had to cancel both because they are during working hours. Of course, they do not offer weekend or evening appointments, so I will be forced to take time off work. I’m going to see if I can get the appointments on Friday, may 29 - the day after I return from our honeymoon.

In the meantime, I’m glad to have proof once again that I don’t have an STD, just to shut these damned doctors up, because it’s the first thing they always leap to whenever there’s a gynecological issue, regardless of the fact that I have a documented non-STD illness in that region.

GAH THIS MAKES ME SO MAD TO HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS EVERY TIME I HAVE ANOTHER COMPLICATION FROM THIS ILLNESS.

But on the other hand, I’m even more scared. They say they don’t know what’s wrong with me.

So what’s wrong with me then?

The fear creeps in. The big ‘c’ word looms regardless of the family doctor saying she saw no abnormal cells on the pap.

The dehydration wasn’t tied to any ongoing gynecological issues, nor was it strictly dehydration.

I keep a separate journal for the rest of what goes on in my life, so I wrote about the fact that I have caught the latest version of the common cold here and here.

This was the journal I used to write everything in, including the endo-related stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to keep it all separated. But it’s easier for me this way, I’ve found.

It’s catch up time once again!

I lived through class last week, and this week I’ve been working full time as an assistant preschool teacher. When I get home in the late afternoon, I am exhausted, but I fill out my practicum journals, which are due at the end of the month, in order to receive my Early Childhood Montessori Education certification.

By day 2 of working, I got sunburned scalp and face. It was minor, but it didn’t help with the fatigue factor. By today, day 3, I fell ill and had to come home early. I was sitting in class monitoring the children as the teacher spoke, when I began to feel really hot in the hands. I mean burning up hot. My feet got really hot, and so did my head. But the rest of my extremities were cool to the touch. I then developed a pounding headache. I felt faint and nauseated. My heart began to race. This of course brought on mild panic, cuz I didn’t know what was happening to me, and if it was related to my as yet undetermined cervical issue (more on that in a moment).

I took my temp - it was 99F, which is what it’s been since the end of March. That’s been worrying me too, cuz my “normal” temp all my life has been around 97.6 - 97.9F.

I drank some water and went back to the playground to supervise children. I was just finishing breaking up a fight (4-year olds taking sand shovels from one another) when I stood up and immediately lost my balance and crashed into the playground equipment, injuring my left hip. Unfortunately, another assistant teacher saw this and pleaded with me to go home for the day. This is the same woman who a little while earlier asked me if I was doing alright. This time, I took her advice. I rested in the teacher’s lounge for nearly an hour, drinking water and putting ice on my wrists and temples, reflecting on her and another assistant’s words - they thought maybe I was dehydrated. I began to think maybe they were right.

When I felt well enough to get on my bicycle, I pedaled home. Today is day 2 of biking to work, go me for exercise! And well, it’s only a mile commute each way. ;)
The racing heart and woozy feeling returned on the ride home. When I got off my bike, I had to rest on the bike for a minute, with the bike propped up against the house, because I was dizzy and out of breath.

Once inside, I began drinking water again, and read up on dehydration.

Symptoms of dehydration usually begin with thirst and progress to more alarming manifestations as the need for water becomes more dire. The initial signs and symptoms of mild dehydration in adults appear when the body has lost about 2% of it’s total fluid. These mild dehydration symptoms are often (but not limited to):

• Thirst
• Loss of Appetite
• Dry Skin
• Skin Flushing
• Dark Colored Urine
• Dry Mouth
• Fatique or Weakness
• Chills
• Head Rushes

If the dehydration is allowed to continue unabated, when the total fluid loss reaches 5% the following effects of dehydration are normally experienced:

• Increased heart rate
• Increased respiration
• Decreased sweating
• Decreased urination
• Increased body temperature
• Extreme fatigue
• Muscle cramps
• Headaches
• Nausea
• Tingling of the limbs

When the body reaches 10% fluid loss emergency help is needed IMMEDIATELY! 10% fluid loss and above is often fatal! Symptoms of severe dehydration include:

• Muscle spasms
• Vomiting
• Racing pulse
• Shriveled skin
• Dim vision
• Painful urination
• Confusion
• Difficulty breathing
• Seizures
• Chest and Abdominal pain
• Unconciousness

I fell into category 2 with 5% of bodily fluid loss, hitting all but two symptoms (tingling and muscle cramps). Go me!

After arriving home and drinking 24oz of water over the next hour, my body recovered enough fluids so that I was in stage 1 of dehydration (severe chills). I’m still very cold. Well I guess this is my normal state…normally dehydrated perhaps!! Lordy.

I then looked up how much I should rehydrate myself - about 64oz per day appears to be the recommendation. So I only have about one more water bottle to get through (up to another 24oz) today, plus some pedialyte, and I should be back to baseline, hopefully.
From now on, I’ll drink two and a half sport bottles of water (60oz) per day at work.

Right now though, I’m totally wiped out. I will be in bed before 9:30pm tonight.

I wonder if having an autoimmune disease makes one more predisposed to dehydration in the same way it makes us more prone to any kind of sickness?

…ah christ. A quick Google search tells me that constant dehydration CAUSES autoimmune diseases, and that rehydrating cures diseases. Yet another broad group of people to fight, alongside the new agers who blame sick people for their illnesses.

Ugh.

Well I guess I prefer one thing following another rather than having it all at once!

TMI to follow, may be triggering…

Between January 31 and February 3, I got over the cold virus that was plaguing me. And then that allowed my body to start in with the premenstrual stuff.

Since about February 5, I have felt like I was developing a urinary tract infection, and overnight, I got a pea-sized bump on my right outer vulva. I’ve also been experiencing the worst anal shooting pains in probably ever.
It got to the point on Friday night while I was at a Taiko drumming show that I thought I’d need to leave and go directly to the emergency room. My entire abdominal region extending into my pelvic region felt bloated and inflamed, and it felt like someone was intermittently shoving what can probably be described as a splintered broomstick up my ass, plunging, then pulling it back out again. Dear gods. On several occasions, I gasped and elevated out of my chair. Same thing on the drive back home. I took medication when I got home.
The next morning, I was feeling better. The bump on my vulva even went down significantly. I had only a few moderate anal pain instances on Saturday, which can be described as someone shoving a safety pin into my anus. The pain was over much quicker.

Now, the first thing I think of when I get such pain is, what have I been eating or doing differently?
I have not had a drop of alcoholic beverage since January 1…but in the past week, I’ve added dried apricots to my diet, and I’ve been chowing down on gluten-free chocolate chip cookies out of PMS cravings. In the past week, I began drinking skullcap tea once a night before bed because it’s a calming agent (I’ve had a lot of self-induced anxiety over the past couple of weeks, centered around self-manufactured blogging deadlines).

I looked at the ingredients on the gluten-free cookies - they’re safe.

I looked up apricot allergy and found this webpage, which helped me a lot. Parts of the second paragraph really applied to me. It says, “Symptoms are more severe including generalised urticaria, abdominal pain…Individuals with apricot allergy also tend to develop adverse reactions to other fruits including peach, apple, cherry, plum, and nuts (such as hazelnut and walnut).”
Fascinating…I cannot eat the skin of apples or peaches without feeling like my intestines and asshole are being ripped apart. Now I know it’s all tied as an allergy. I don’t normally eat cherries or plums, so I can’t comment on whether I have a reaction to those. I haven’t paid attention to whether I have a similar reaction when I eat hazelnuts and walnuts, so now I can pay attention to that.

I looked up skullcap, and while I found that it won’t give me any abdominal or intestinal side effects, the webpage I found did go a long way in explaining why my anxiety was increasing rather than decreasing. I’ve been using the max dosage for my tea (30 drops of tincture) instead of the minimum (15 drops). So I’ll scale back on that and see if I notice any results.

With my thoughts on the apricots, on Friday, I phoned up my allergist and requested to go forward with the endoscopy that he wanted me to do last year. He wanted me to do this because he felt the blood test for celiac was not enough to go on, and he wanted a better test to rule out celiac. He really thinks I have it. I have not wanted to do the endoscopy out of fear, but now I feel that it is time I do this, to get definitive diagnoses ruled in or out. I spoke with the nurses there and they told me that peaches were tested for but not apricots, and the peach panel turned out negative for allergies. The doctor is to call me back this week and we’ll go over what all needs to be done in preparation for an accurate endoscopy reading.

In keeping with my ever-expanding goals for 2009, I am also trying to locate a rheumatologist so I can get my osteoarthritis looked at again, and rule out whether it’s rheumatoid arthritis or just osteoarthritis. This could be an important distinction, because of the fact that I have other immunological problems (endometriosis, allergies, spontaneous onset of acute pancreatitis at age 21).
I would also like to know definitively whether osteoarthritis is also considered an immunological disease like rheumatoid arthritis is.

I have osteoarthritis in my cervical spine, with bulging discs at C5 and C6. I thought this was from the car accident in 1994 but it may be that I’ve had degeneration since childhood. I definitely have osteoarthritis in my knees for example, and I had to have doctors notes exusing me from certain activities in gym class all my life. It’s possible that the car accident severely exacerbated the osteoarthritis and that’s why I now have bulging discs.

I also recently found out that I have osteoarthritis in my thoracic spine! I was looking back through all of my medical reports through the years and found a report from my chiropractor. In that report, it is noted that I have a diagnosis of Hyperlordosis and mild levoscoliosis, or curvature of the spine. Okay, I’ve known this since I was about 12 years old, and my family never had the money to fix it. And several of my aunts, as well as my maternal grandma also have/had this.

But the real kicker of this report was what I found at the bottom of the report: I also have osteoarthritis in the thoracic spince, from T6 - T8. I don’t recall this ever being properly explained to me. I’ve always focused on my neck injury. This totally explains the out-of-alignment bump on the spine that I have in my mid-back, which my husband likes to play with, because he finds it so weird-feeling. ;)

Now I wonder, did having this out-of-whack thoracic vertebrae CAUSE my acute pancreatitis when I was 21 years old? Hmmmm.

Anyway, to wrap up, the more immediate issue had been the abdominal/pelvic/anal inflamation and pain. I’ve not eaten any apricots since Friday, and the pain hasn’t been a problem at all today. Hopefully my system will get back on track in the anal region before the pain really sets in within the pelvic region by Saturday.

With all the pain in the past week, I was really depressed. The depression was already setting in the week prior - it’s my annual winter blahs, which always hit pretty badly by February. The pain just made the depression REALLY BAD for a few days. I hope I’m coming out of it, cuz I really need to be emotionally strong in the next week to be able to battle the endometriosis pain - and the fact that I’ll be bedridden for days again.

Just thought I’d update you since my last post 2 days ago…

My current symptoms:

• Sneezing
• alternating runny/stuffed nose
• small dry cough
• yellow phlegm
• headache that comes and goes
• light sensitivity
• clogged ears again

I have all the same symptoms I listed in the last post, except for the eye pain - it’s not as stabby as it was… and the major fatigue, although I’m forcing myself to rest right now. I’m in bed with the laptop.

I was let out of work early today because both the mother and the baby are sick. The mother was home from work yesterday with a cough so severe that she couldn’t sleep, and would have tears streaming down her face from the force of the cough. She went to the doctor today and was told she has a brewing sinus infection, and was put on antibiotics. She said her doctor felt her face, pushed on her sinuses and they were very sensitive to the touch. She has a good doctor. I want a good doctor like that! But now I know to lightly push on my sinuses and see if they hurt next time I feel like I’m getting a sinus infection.
The baby has a fever. When I got in, I was told she had a 99.8°F temp and to just monitor it. The baby is likely teething so it’s no surprise. Over the next hour and a half, the baby’s temp rose to 101 and kept going til it hit 101.9°F, and she began coughing. At that point, I discussed calling it quits for the day, since the mom was already home. She agreed and I got let out at 1:30pm.
Because I was tending to the feverish baby, who naturally couldn’t nap very well on account of feeling craptacular and coughing, I didn’t get to eat lunch. I got a monster headache that started to brew around 11:30am and got really intense by the time I left at 1:30pm. Now I usually eat my lunch when the baby goes down for her second nap, anytime from 1-2pm. So I shouldn’t have had the hunger headache that I did, especially considering that I’d eaten my normal amount of breakfast food when I got to work instead of at home before work.

Eh, in any case, could be hunger-related or it could be a sinus headache. I ate when I got home, and took 600mg of ibuprofen. I’m in bed on the laptop and will be napping shortly.

I know I’m still germ-phobic and still wondering why the hell I went back to childcare if I’m germ-phobic. I think the germ phobia started when I worked in daycare the first time around, and was sick every month for an entire year. Although I know part of my germ-phobia is due to the fact that I’ve always, since childhood, gotten sick quicker and had it last longer than ‘healthy’ people. And yet, the stress I get over my germ-phobia pales in comparison to the stress I had working those long years for corporate entities.

<SOAPBOX> Don’t get me wrong - despite the health issues, I still get huge satisfaction out of working with children. It’s a rewarding job to see a tiny human learning and doing right before your very eyes, catching on that they’re grasping something new, and getting so excited that they’re mastering something. The idea that the entire world is theirs for the taking - unlimited opportunities before them… To see that in a child’s eyes, you can’t tell me working anywhere else is better than this. Before the harsh cruel world tries to sink its teeth into the young and tries to tell them who can and cannot succeed because of gender, race, orientation or belief, the young still have the innocent truth in their heads that the entire world is there to support them and that they can accomplish anything they want to. And I’m there to see this truth in their eyes, and to help encourage this trend, and to bolster their confidence so they have a fighting chance. The first person I ever saw the need to help in this way was my chosen sister. I don’t take credit for how she turned out - I am just proud that she took what I offered and made herself grow and blossom into somebody wonderful. </SOAPBOX>

Well I had two good days it seems of feeling better from being sick and from being on george.

I was on antibiotics from Friday, January 16th til Tuesday, January 20th. I got george on Monday, January 19th, which lasted til Friday, January 23rd. The pain however was over a day earlier, on Thursday.

So I had manic energy and felt great on Friday, January 23rd and Saturday, January 24th. My husband and I hung out with two friends on Friday, and hung out with 14 people for a birthday dinner on Saturday.
By Saturday morning, my throat was scratchy, and I chalked it up to having been around all the cigarette smoke on Friday.

(Sidenote: my gods, if I can’t handle the cigarette smoke blowing back in from a balcony from one person, I’m going to DIE in the U.K. on our honeymoon!)

However, by Sunday, I had a continuous runny nose, sneezing, and yellow sinus gunk all over again. What the hell!

I checked LiveJournal on Sunday and found out that a friend I’d sat next to the night before? She’d come down with the stomach flu.

She posted on LiveJournal on Monday that her entire family was now barfing several times and miserable from the stomach flu.

Last night, I got home from work after a full day of sneezing, runny nose, fatigue and baby watching, and just went to bed. I slept from about 7:45pm - 5:45am.

I just asked my friends who I saw on Friday if they’ve been sick - nope - they say they feel fine.

So because I already had a scratchy throat before even seeing my friends at dinner Saturday night, my re-infection probably happened via my workplace (the mother, the father, the baby or all three) or via my husband as a carrier (either through his workplace or through his bandmates).
It likely wasn’t helped by sitting next to a friend with developing flu, or across from another friend who still has a huge hacking cough and was on her 2nd round with pink eye that night…

Last possibility: I never had a bacterial sinus infection at all - and the antibiotics were useless - and this is just a continuation of what I already had.

SEE? THIS is why I need competent doctors to give thorough examination of me to rule out what I do and don’t have, instead of looking at me from across a room and declaring whether or not I have whichever illness!!! GAH.

In any case, my current symptoms:

• Sneezing
• alternating runny/stuffed nose
• small dry cough
• yellow phlegm
• headache that comes and goes
• eye pain and light sensitivity
• clogged ears again
• major fatigue

Many of my friends have had this virus since Thanksgiving. That’s two months!!!

I hate winter.