I Will Not Suffer In Silence

Thursday was a pain-free day! Yay!

On Friday, the pain returned. I had a lot of joint pain and back pain that day. By evening, my upper back was trying to seize up. By the time we left our friends’ house, my left upper arm was in constant spasm. As a matter of fact, it’s still in spasm.

Despite the low back and pelvic pain for much of the day (which was kicked up after being intimate, OF COURSE), I went walking all over town with my husband, and I refused to take pain medication in case I wanted to partake in any alcohol with friends (which I did later that evening).

I wondered if the resurgence in pain could be attributed to having been intimate with my husband, or if it was due to the impending rainfall, or if it was due to eating inflammatory foods, or all of the above. I felt guilty only for the inflammatory food ingestion, but only a little guilty. I have to LIVE my life, dammit.

When we got home last night, I thought I would need to go right to bed, because for some reason I was running a 99.9°F fever. I got all paranoid that someone I’d spent time with at two Thanksgiving gatherings the day before had gotten me sick. The flu is going around, and I’ve been trying to avoid the preschool crud for the past month as it is.

Despite the fever, I found I was restless. This is when the urge to CLEAN came over me again, as strongly as the urge had been on Wednesday night, when I was on my hands and knees wiping down baseboards in the kitchen and bathroom.

I was up til nearly 3am dusting furniture in the living room and rearranging toys and knick-knacks that we collect.

Part of the reason for this rearranging was that my husband has just purchased a new television and will be purchasing a new furniture stand for said television, so we needed to clear off the old entertainment center. I just had the energy in me to do it in the middle of the night last night, is all…

All the dust from the shelves had stirred up my allergies, so I took a full dose of Benadryl, hoping that it would serve to knock me out so I could finally get some rest.

Rest was not to be found! Though the good news is that my temperature went back down to normal.

I went to bed around 3am and still could not settle. And on top of it, I was freezing (thanks to premenstrual hormones). My entire body was tense, and my left arm was still in muscle spasm - not painful spasm mind you, but just a continual muscle twitch up near the shoulder.

Around 4am I could take it no longer, and I took my very last half pill of muscle relaxer I’d been saving. Finally, between the Benadryl and the muscle relaxer, I was able to get in a few hours of sleep. However, by 7:30am, my entire body was in full on clench mode again. I was sleeping with my fists balled up and my shoulders trying to touch. Even the heating pad didn’t dent the muscle tension.

I swear, at this point I prayed for horse tranquilizers.

Intermittently throughout the night, the pelvic pain also made itself known. It’s hard to know if the pain was solely because I’d been intimate with my husband the day before, or if it was solely because my period is due today, or if it’s the rainstorm that finally manifested overnight, or if it is a combination of all of the above.

Then there’s the fact that I’ve eaten nothing but inflammatory food and drink all weekend (pie, cookies, chocolate, nigori sweet sake, ham, steak, crab, butter, waffles with syrup, bacon, coffee with sugar and cream, cheetos!!).
Seriously, every last one of those items is on the inflammatory foods list and/or my forbidden foods list.

Today I will begin the round-the-clock Ibuprofen dosing. The pelvic pain is a low, droning ache. The low back pain is moderate, and is as a result kicking up some nausea. I’ve been doing slow stretches since last night for the pain.

My fever has not returned - so far so good! I really don’t like dealing with the endometriosis flareups while also being sick with a virus.

Outside, the rain is an on again, off again drizzle, with threatening-looking clouds. It’s a breezy 52°F (11°C).

And that’s the report - I was due today but so far nothing has started to flow, yet, aside from the pain of course.
I estimate I’m currently a 3.5 on the pain scale. And now it’s time to get up and move around…and take that ibuprofen.

The mid-cycle pain (mittelschmerz) started on November 16 and lasted through November 17.

On November 18, I was highly fatigued, and missed a friend’s concert. I was however able to get some teaching internship homework done that night, with my remaining spoons.

I got through work on November 19, and had to return to work on November 20 for the annual Fall Harvest Festival. Parents of the children who attend the school were put into groups and had a continent assigned to them. They all had to cook or bring foods found or popular to a particular continent. Each class did songs and dances relating to the continent/country they are studying. My class has been studying the Philippines in Asia, and so they counted from one to ten in Tagalog, sang Sampung mga daliri (see another cute rendition here), attempted a traditional dance, and sang I Am But A Small Voice (which went so well that they got wild applause).

After the Fall Harvest Festival, I needed downtime. I’d used up all my spoons, but I still wanted to go out dancing that night. I was pretty upset with my body for being so tired and achey. I was mad at my mind for being so moody and premenstrual.
I ended up staying home and joining a party of friends 2,500 miles away in my home state. They were having a party and so I joined them on Skype. They were all super drunk and having a fun time, so my husband and I decided to have elderflower fizz - it is elderflower liquor with champagne.

Well, the champagne hated me worse than I expected. I know I’m not supposed to have anything with yeast or sulfites, but this particular champagne must have been loaded with them. My stomach hadn’t hurt that bad or been that upset in a long time. What a shitty day overall it had turned out to be, health-wise and emotionally for me.

On Sunday, November 21, I went to a matinee with my husband and two of our friends - we saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When I got home, I spent the rest of the evening once again catching up on teaching internship homework, and practicing my presentation for Monday.

Despite the weekend’s ups and downs, my husband and I were able to enjoy each other intimately. I note this because with endometriosis, it is often difficult to be intimate without grave pain. Twice a month is the norm - anything more than that and we’re jumping for joy. Such as it was this month - a veritable jumping for joy.

On Monday, November 22, I began to experience gnawing uterine cramps, and I knew this was the result of having been intimate with my husband over the weekend, because I am diagnosed with dyspareunia. Same thing happened which set off the mittelschmerz last week.
So on Monday, I had sharp stabbing pain on the right, then on the left, then radiating through the rectum as day/night progressed. That day, I took half a Tylenol 3 + 400mg Ibuprofen at lunchtime at work. Later, I ingested half a Tylenol 3 + 400mg Ibuprofen at dinner time, and then another half Tylenol 3 after dinner while at a friend’s house catching up on The Walking Dead.

When I got home, I experienced a painful bowel movement, which set off some nausea and shakes, and reminded me what I’ve known for years - that I have rectal involvement with endometriosis. I went to bed with a heating pad on my abdomen and lower back all night.

This morning, I woke nearly two hours before my alarm clock went off, and could not get back to sleep. I had only had five hours of sleep. Despite that, the pain level was very low, so I went to work. I did not bicycle to work because the pain has been too unpredictable, and it has also been raining.
While walking from my car to the workplace, I was so shaky that I thought I might collapse. I couldn’t tell if the shakiness was from nerves or from my body becoming so weak from fatigue and recent pain, but I forced myself to keep walking.
I got through the morning in a moderately agitated state, with frequent bouts of ‘warm flashes’ because my hormones are doing acrobatics inside of me.

The gnawing uterine cramps started up again at lunch hour. I experienced intermittent sharp stabbing pain on the right ovary. I took 600mg Ibuprofen at lunchtime at work, but the pain radiated to my rectum, which left me debilitated, shaky and nauseous. Right before I was to end my lunch break, my bowels went into a painful tizzy, and I spent many minutes on end at the toilet, trying not to vomit from the recto-vaginal pain as a painful bowel movement tried to happen. When I finally did defecate, there was blood in the stool. My anus did not hurt, so I wondered if it was from hemorrhoids or from endometriosis perforating my bowels. Either way, I was feeling really ill.

I can handle a certain amount of uterine pain more than I can handle the ovarian pain, but I cannot handle the recto-vaginal pain at all. May as well beat me senseless, it’s all the same.

When I got home from work today, I applied a heating pad to my bottom, half a muscle relaxer (Soma), .5mg Ativan, and a nap. I slept from around 3pm til nearly 8pm. I woke to urinate, then had cereal for dinner, which caused a new round of painful defecation - loose this time, with some more blood, and nausea. I took my temperature - it’s 99.4°F. But then it’s been 99 point something more often than not for months, if not over a year, now.

I began to wonder if I have an intestinal virus. I’d spent the better part of last week fighting off an upper respiratory tract infection. Preschoolers - they’ll kill ya.

Now I’m back in bed, journaling all of this before returning to sleep for the night.

Good night.

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.

As is typical when I am suffering from endometriosis pain, I either do not want to eat, or I want only to eat cereals and grains.

On Tuesday, I had moderate nausea for much of the afternoon and into the evening. The nausea came and went on Wednesday. Even when I’m not experiencing nausea, I don’t really want to eat much when I’m experiencing pelvic pain. It doesn’t matter the level of pain.

This morning I had one bowl of “EnviroKidz” Peanut Butter Panda Puffs sweetened corn cereal, with some goat milk. I haven’t had goat milk to drink in awhile - I began craving it this week. I also ate a Trader Joe’s gluten free waffle with Earth Balance “butter” and some sunflower seed butter.

The pain started as I was getting ready for work, so I called in sick. One of my head teachers phoned me as I was texting her - she figured today would be the day I’d be out. She’s pretty on top of things.

I don’t think I ate again for awhile. I know that around 8:30am, I curled up in bed with the electric heating pad on my back. My husband put my two (unheated) rice pads on top of the electric pad to add desired pressure. I konked out and didn’t wake up until 9:45am.

I spent the day in a super tired pain haze, sitting in a wooden chair in the kitchen. The less I moved, the better. Ever since discovering back in July that the pain is lessened by sitting in this damned chair, I’ve made a point to keep the kitchen table clear so that I can use the laptop and also keep doing homework even when in pain.

I do not think it has a lot to do with my posture in the chair - I often find myself slouching in the chair. What I think is happening is that the nerves in my butt and in my legs get compressed when I sit on the chair, and this acts like crimping a hose, and therefore dulls the pain.
I dunno. Maybe my posture is being forced more upright. All I know is, sitting in a hard wooden chair for the past four cycles/months seems to lessen the pain somewhat.

Sometime around 11am today is when the bleeding ramped up from dark brown spotting to dark red flow. It’s been dark red all day. It has been thick, sticky, and slow to come out. I’ve only gone through two light fabric pads today.

I got into my usual refusal of meds funk again today. I finally relented and took 600mg Advil gelcaps sometime around 1 or 2pm.

While trying to get some homework done around 7:30pm, the pain became sharp and continuous, so I put my homework away. This sucks. I got exactly two drawings done for the fifth and last Language Arts binder tonight. I still have 23 more drawings to go. I’m still only half-way through the Math binder illustrations, and I still haven’t even started the Cultural binder. These are all 3 months past due. I spent my day ranting on my endo blog and generally being mentally irritated, and also in moderate pain. I did not want to do homework. I had to force myself to do some.

I also had to force myself to eat.

I ate a bowl of rice cereal (Trader Joe’s version of Rice Krispies) with some Almond milk.
I ate a rice-chocolate candy bar.
I ate a “Yo-baby” banana flavoured yoghurt cup.

I seriously think that’s all I’ve had to eat today, until now.
Right now I’m eating a brown rice tortilla, topped with Trader Joe’s Alfredo sauce, some dill flakes, some basil flakes, some white mushrooms, diced forbidden black forest ham, and shredded goat milk cheddar cheese.
This is the biggest meal I’ve had all day, and I ate it not only because my stomach was finally officially rumbling, but also to be able to take my first Tylenol 3 of the day.

I’ve got 7 Vegetable Soup thawing in the fridge - just took it out of the freezer today. I’ve got some chicken breast tenderloins cooking in the oven to force myself to eat tomorrow.

We’ll see how I’m functioning tomorrow, and whether I can bring myself to eat more than cereal.

Three last things to note:

1) Either it’s seasonal allergies, or 2) I’m getting sick, but there’s a lot of sneezing and thick phlegm going on today. There’s been a lot of phlegm in general for the past week or so. Being a preschool teacher will guarantee that one gets a virus or two or three on a pretty regular basis.

3) My ‘trapped nerve’ in the neck/left shoulder keeps acting up, then settling down, then acting up again, but I’ve refused to continue taking the remaining muscle relaxers. I think there’s 4 left. I’ll take them with Tylenol 3 if the endometriosis pain gets really bad.

Right now, the pain is radiating down the top of my leg nerves, to my knees. So I’m gonna call it a night and layer myself with all manner of heating pads in bed.

August 25: my husband and I were intimate.

August 26: Intermittent vaginal and pelvic pain all day - ever since intimacy the night before. This is common, since I am clinically diagnosed with Dyspaneuria, and it’s depressing.

August 31: I was scheduled to see the pain management psychologist at UCSF for our third visit, but I cancelled it because my husband’s health insurance carves out psychological treatment to some third party company called Magellan, and therefore my pain management clinics at UCSF are NOT covered. This has thoroughly pissed me off to no end, and I spent a large part of July and August in rage over it.

August 31 was also Day 8 - when mittelschmerz was supposed to hit, but I did not! I made no mention of pelvic or ovarian pain in this blog or on Facebook, or in my iCal endo notes. So this is awesome, I did not have mittelschmerz this time!

September 5: Right side ovarian stabbing pain, and low back pain - by evening. Took 600mg Advil and one half T3 at bedtime. We had driven down to Southern California (8 hours) to visit my husband’s ailing grandmother, and it was 95°F (35°C). Grandma refused to turn on the air conditioner or the fan because she was convinced it was already on. I swear we got heat exhaustion - both of us nearly passed out at varying points of the afternoon. I finally turned on the fan, and when my husband’s aunt showed up for her evening routine of caring for her mother, she switched the unit from fan to air conditioning.
I think the long drive down there is what set off the ovarian pain, or it could have been the mocha I had that morning (caffeine).

September 6: Continued right side ovarian stabbing pain all day. Took 1,200mg Advil and 1.5 T3 over the course of the day - but it did not mitigate the sharp stabbing pain. I was in pain during our second visit to grandma, and all the way home.

September 7: back to work - the ovarian pain was intermittent and mild throughout the day - possibly because I was back to moving around again, the pain was lessened?

In other news, the light cough I developed around August 18 left again by around September 2, and has returned again as of today. I’ve begun to wonder if it’s my newest nervous tick, or if I really have been getting virus after virus since July 18. The last two have been just a mild cough, though yesterday I ran a 99°F temp all morning. Ah, the wondering that I do. My husband and I talked about this on Monday - the so-called Twenty Questions I do to myself all the time with the endometriosis, and how it never really gets me anywhere. Sure, my questioning of my diet led me to discover the gluten, yeast and sulfite sensitivities, and it helped me to realise that cow’s milk, coffee and corn syrup set off immediate pelvic pain, but more often than not, it’s just too hard to really know what causes the pain, and yet I punish myself with this never-ending cycle of guilt.

My husband had woken me up about two hours after my last journal entry, to say he was going to take off to game night, unless I needed him to stay with me. I pleaded with him to stay. He said he would, but that he just didn’t know what to do if I was going to spend the rest of the day sleeping.
I told him that made me feel guilty - that he should just go to game, then.

It was clear he didn’t want to leave me alone, but he didn’t want to not be with his friends. It took me about 20 minutes or so to rouse myself out of my pain and pain medication stupor, but I told him “why don’t I just go with you to game, then?”

He liked that idea.

We collected my heating pads, my meds, the laptop in case I wanted to blog or attempt any homework, and two books; one for school and one for pleasure.

We got to our friend’s house and to my dismay, it smelled like smoke. I have a smoke allergy/chemical sensitivity. I was grouchy at my friend C - “WHY DID YOU SMOKE IN YOUR HOUSE.”
C replied, “Yeah but that was hours ago.”

I resigned to my fate - I was stuck here. My husband was already setting up the kitchen table for game night.

I was told where I could make myself comfortable, and I was told that a friend J, who lives in that house, was downstairs with a burst ovarian cyst. I didn’t want to disturb her unless I heard her crying out in pain, so I stayed upstairs in my own little world of pain.

I tried to heat up my heating pads, only to be reminded that they do not have a microwave in that house. I was directed to a big heating pad and was allowed to use that.

The offending smoker friend also helped set me up on his wireless network, but the moment I was set up, I was suddenly exhausted again and so I put the laptop away. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open long enough to hold conversation with anyone, watch TV, or read a book.

A third friend, also named J, who lives in that house, was also not feeling well. He sat in the living room on his laptop the entire night. He’s had spinal cord injury and had surgery after surgery to cauterise nerves. He thinks nerves are growing back or something, and is in a lot of pain again. I gave him one of my Tylenol 3 because he did not have any Norco on him.

At one point, around 8pm, the stabbing right side ovarian pain returned. I ended up on the floor, moaning in pain, rocking to and fro, with the heating pad. I was on all fours, then on my back, and then I settled into an arm chair w/ ottoman for the rest of the night. Their crazy cat October decided to be nice for once, and curled up on my tummy and purred all night. I was told she only likes women, and likes women best when they are in pain - that is the ONLY time that cat is nice.
Crazy cat.

So, the pain I had on Sunday lasted through until after 10pm, despite the fact that the bleeding had subsided again. My abs and ribs still felt bruised all that day.

I got home, showered, changed into my bedclothes, and went to bed.

Woke up Monday morning pain-free and got ready for my first day back to work. I was still spotting a little. I decided to try riding my bike to work, but as I went out the door to go to work, the pain set back in, and so I abandoned the bicycling idea and drove the measly one mile to work, instead. Glad I did. I needed my energy at work to move stuff around and help set up for the new school year.
I required a total of 800mg Advil to get through the day.

Got home and was very tired, but went on to my psychology appointment. I’m seeing a shrink again ever since I had a major depressive episode at the end of July. I’m still trying to figure out if it was JUST all the stress I have been under from school and finances, or if the Cannabidiol I tried for pain management set off an even worse episode of pre-existing stress and depression.
I evened out by August 18, but that was three weeks of pure hell from one menstrual cycle right up into this next menstrual cycle, which started on August 19. I am still on anti-anxiety meds (ativan).

I spent the rest of Monday evening hanging out with my husband, making and eating dinner, and watching TV. No homework got done on Monday.

Today is a new day - I start the clock so to speak - I have 21 days til next bedridden. Today I will go to work (not sure if driving or biking yet - it’s supposed to be in the 90s today so I guess biking would be better on the ozone), and when I get home, I will force myself to do some more homework.

In about 8 days, I will have Mittelschmerz - so the middle of next week - the first week the children are back to school. Hopefully it will go easy on me while I navigate my first week in the classroom.

One last thing - about last week sometime, I developed a cough again. So this is the second virus / cough since July 18 that I have caught. And now I’m going to enter a new school year with preschoolers. I expect to be sick continually in one form or another until December. I am pounding Vitamin C and Zinc and all the rest of my supplements, and will be back in the gym by no later than Thursday this week, once the heat wave cools down. Today is Day 2 of the first heat wave of the Northern California Summer.

And the cough came back last night, full on with lung gunk. Still coughing a lung this morning. Ugh.

Still super tired but now I’m guessing it’s because I’m still sick, not because I’m catching up on sleep.

This is not the first, second or third time I have had a relapse in an upper respiratory tract infection after spending days bedridden. The reason is that I’m hopped up on a lot of codeine when I’m experiencing excruciating pelvic pain, and the codeine also acts as a cough suppressant. Once I come off all the codeine, the upper respiratory tract infection resumes as it was before.

Despite the fatigue and cough, I am going to spend the day cleaning house and I may attempt a bike ride.

Homework is on hold today and possibly tomorrow. I can’t live in a dusty, mildewy house when I’m sick because I’ll get sicker. The house had no care that I can detect over the week that I was living in a motel for school. It didn’t get cared for at all during the commute days or intermittent motel stays, either. My husband insists he did a lot of housework, but I can only see dishes and laundry and catbox were done. That is not enough. We have severe dust and mold allergies. The bathroom is a nightmare again and hasn’t been cleaned since I last did it a month ago.

The dust and cat hair tumbleweeds threatens to eat us alive.

BAH!

MEN!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DETOX WEEK 1

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

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

Supplements before meal: 2 clove capsules

Supplements with meal:
1 ginger
1 Uva Ursi

Lunch: Supplements before meal: 2 clove capsules

Supplements with meal: 1 ginger

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

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

Supplements with meal: 1 ginger
2 Uva Ursi

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

Make tea for following day if needed

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

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

Today is heavy and painful. After 7am, I woke with severe low back pain that left me hunched over further than I normally am when I get out of bed or a chair in pain. I could have scraped my fingertips on the ground, it seemed I was bent over so far.

I ate some cereal and almond milk, and consumed a whole Tylenol 3 pill first thing this morning. I went back to bed with a heating pad on my lower back, and alternated between the cat/dog and the cat/cow yoga poses on the floor and on the bed. I whimpered a lot.

Then I went back to the kitchen and reheated my corn and rice heating pads. I sat down in the kitchen chair while waiting, and my pain dissipated. So I’ve been in this same chair ever since, reheating the pads as necessary. That’s about 4 hours now I’ve been in this chair, but the pain is manageable. The moment I get up and walk to the bathroom, the pain starts again. So here’s where I’ll stay, like I should have done yesterday.

I’d also like to point out that my pain was managed well by the Tylenol 3 for the past four hours, and I have been coherent and rational, albeit moderately sleepy.

It just sucks that a synthetic pain relief pill which eats my kidneys and liver works better for pain management than a plant growing in nature, which will not kill my kidneys and liver but will put me in a vegetative state for 8 or more hours.

I’ve tried Sativa. I’ve tried Kush. I’ve tried Indica. Now I’ve tried CBD. All make me incredibly high, even on low dose, with minimal pain relief.
Actually, the Indica, Sativa and Kush INCREASED my pain.

Bleh.

I am currently on round two of medication for the day: 400mg Ibuprofen and half a Tylenol 3.

Gonna try to get some homework done.

6:48pm edit:
Around 4pm I took my third round of medication - a full Tylenol 3. So it was about 8am, 12pm, 4pm.
At 6:48pm it became suddenly hard to breathe. Maybe didn’t drink enough water today. Chugging water now and going to lay down. I am happy to have gotten about six hours of homework done!

8:07pm edit:
I do not understand why, for two days in a row, I’ve become full on high as a kite on medication taken hours earlier. Today it was nearly three hours after I had taken my last dose of Tylenol 3, and suddenly I was high as a kite and it was hard to breathe. I had the codeine suffocation like I’d taken too much of it. When I went to lay down, I began getting piercing pain in the abdominal wall, just to the left of my belly button.
And then the coughing fit started. I spent 20-25 minutes coughing violently while in bed. I coughed til my throat bled. Every breath in itched. This could have been a dust allergy interacting with the upper respiratory tract infection, I dunno. The news says there’s a Pertussis outbreak. I am supposedly vaccinated against it, but my immune system is non-existent so who knows.

My coughing fit did not calm down until I applied eucalyptus chest rub to my chest and inhaled it off of a cotton ball. I am so glad I spent the cash on that stuff at the hippie store.

Two last things: #1 the weather has been mild and sunny for the past two days and I have not seen any of it due to the pain and medication haze.
#2 I forgot to mention that I had called my GYN about the greyish clot I found two days ago, and I heard back from the doctor’s office yesterday, just as I was fighting the last bits of coherency as the cannabidiol took me down.
The person I spoke with said it’s entirely possible that my endometrioma ruptured and that could be what I am seeing what with all the grey and dark brown blood and debris. I expressed worry over what my innards must be covered in, if this is diseased material that ruptured inside of me. She told me there’s no way of knowing what, if any damage has been done. She wrote off my worry. Stupid human.

This is where it gets interesting - I Wait For It and find out just how bad the pain gets as new growths and adhesions start to take root…if in fact the endometrioma did rupture.

Go me.

Yesterday was Day 1. George was a day late. I suspect he was a day late because I went swimming on Saturday and also drank two Sangrias. The swimming was fun, I treaded water and moved my arms back and forth a lot to get in an upper body workout. We were at our friend’s apartment that day.

Sunday morning, I began spotting, and it was dark brown with clots already present.

At Noon Sunday, I attended a free Alexander Technique pain management class through my local dispensary. I intend to go every Sunday. The instructor helps train us to make better choices with the way we move our bodies relative to our pain issues. Yesterday there were three of us in the class.

After that class, which lasts an hour, my husband took me and our friend G to the movie theatre to see Inception. The movie was a nice little mindtwister, I liked it. After the movie, I used the toilet, and discovered a greyish mass in the dark brown and maroon blood clots when I wiped myself.
GREY! Like I’d see on my surgery photos of what colour the endometriosis is INSIDE of me! I was not okay with this!

Twelve minutes ago, I ingested a zero sized veggie cap filled with medical grade cannabidiol. The dispensary had them in 00 capsules, but I thought that since I’m already so sensitive to everything on the planet, I should try a 0, instead. So here we are, Waiting For It.

…

Twenty-three minutes have passed and I am now feeling a bit mentally cloudy, and I am burping up the taste of cannabis. I’ve always hated the taste and smell of this stuff.
The pain is still with me and has been hovering at about a 7 on the pain scale, with sharp twinges on the left ovary shooting me up to 8.5 on the pain scale every so often.

…

Thirty minutes in, and I’m feeling a bit nauseous. My stomach is gurgling a lot and I’m still burping up the icky taste.
I am drinking Hobee’s Cinnamon Orange tea, which contains black tea, orange peel, cloves, rose hips, and oddly, no cinnamon.

…

Forty-six minutes in, and I’m getting sharp uterine pains which radiate to my lower back. I don’t feel blitzed on the stuff like I would had I smoked it, but I am still waiting for pain relief. I am bleeding heavily today, and have already bled through a thick fabric pad to my underwear.

I am still sick and coughing up thick green mucous in the morning. My husband entered the bedroom after his morning shower and I began gagging on the scent of his shampoo again. He got all offended as he always does when I told him his shampoo is killing me. I told him it’s worse for me right now because not only am I on my period, I also have an upper respiratory tract infection going on, so my sense of smell is heightened, and along with that my chemical sensitivities. He promised tomorrow morning to use the unscented shampoo I bought weeks ago. I think he’s enjoyed not having my chemically sensitive self around while I’ve been at school. I spent all of last week in a motel, and I’ve been staying in a motel on and off for six weeks, so he’s not had to worry about chemicals and fragrances. I shocked him back to reality this morning.
We think we traced the source of the illness - the friend I suspected (M) says she suspects our other friend (P). The timing makes sense - we were both hanging out with P on Thursday, July 15th. M and her husband had given me and P a ride. That night, P had a cough. Then on Friday, M & P hung out again. M said P looked really bad by then. By Saturday, M was sick, and P had lost her voice, but still came out to another event - a friend’s birthday - which I also attended.
P showed up again for the AIDS Walk on Sunday, July 18th; we gave her a ride and hung out all day with her. M also showed up for the AIDS Walk. While P was not coughing so much, M was full on sick by now, coughing a lot.
By 7pm that night, I developed a cough. Four days later, I sounded like a barking sea lion in the evenings and mornings, and that’s where it is even today, another four days after that. My ears have been plugging up and my eyes have wanted to stick shut, they’ve been so gooey. My friend M says I have perhaps another week before I start to feel better, and her husband also caught the illness and has a full blown ear infection, now. UGH.
Despite all this, my husband keeps insisting on kissing on me, because he’s missed me so much. I warned him, and he doesn’t care. Boys.

…

We are at the hour mark now since I ingested the cannabis. As long as I don’t move around, the pain is about at a 4.5 at the moment. I am sitting with one leg crossed under the other on a hard wooden chair. I am uncomfortable and the foot tucked under my leg is falling asleep. So I will have to move. Let’s see if I can relocate to the bedroom and what that does to the pain level.

…

Okay, that was about 20 minutes of moving supplies and myself to the new location, from the kitchen table to the bed. I had to make the bed, set up the wooden bed desk, unplug and move the laptop to the beddesk, plug it back in, and move my homework 3-ring binders and supplies to the bed so that I can attempt some homework today.
At first, while doing all this, I noticed that there was a spike in pain, but I was happily dissociated from it. I could tell there was tightening in the pelvic region, down through my hips. I could feel a burning sensation, but it didn’t hurt. However, after nearly 20 minutes of movement, the pain screamed through the medication, and now here I am, sitting on the bed with a heating pad on my pelvis and a heating pad on my lower back, doing my breathing exercises.
All the movement required to transport things to the bedroom also kicked up the effects of the medication, and now I am even more fuzzy-headed than I was before. I think I may need to sleep, soon. Not moving is in my best interest.

My review of the edible cannabis so far is that although it takes an hour to kick in, I think it might be a viable alternative to the Tylenol 3, if I remember that I still should stay home from work and force bed rest. I accept the fact that there is nothing on the market that will both alleviate my pain and keep me alert and sober.

…

It’s been nearly an hour now since I moved location from kitchen to bedroom, and the sharp pains are still with me, dammit. I should not have poked the hornet’s nest. I am considering taking half a Tylenol 3 and some Ibuprofen at this point. The pain is at 7.5 on the pain scale, and burning.

…

Just over an hour since moving location, and two hours since I ingested the cannabidiol. I sat up instead of reclining back, and that helped the pain go down momentarily, but now it’s back again. The pain is still burning throughout the uterus and radiating to the lower back. Still 7.5 on the pain scale. The heating pads are not hot enough. I am going to rewarm them and also ingest 600mg ibuprofen and half a Tylenol 3.

This concludes today’s medicinal experiment.

Results: recommended alternative to Tylenol 3, as long as I do not move around. Experiment needs to be repeated when I have the emotional strength to try it again. Right now however, I have reached my emotional and physical breaking point with the pain, and I feel that I need the codeine, acetaminophen and ibuprofen cocktail.

4:52pm Update:
About four hours ago, I took a half a Tylenol 3 and 600mg of Ibuprofen, and I did that just over two hours after taking a dose of cannabidiol.

I slept for two hours.

Roughly 45 minutes ago, I took a second dose of the Tylenol 3 - only half a pill, because the pain started ramping up again.
Just over the half-hour mark, I was suddenly supremely stoned. Holy shit. I’m never this freaking high on one half of a Tylenol 3. I know this is the remnants of the cannabidiol, because of the way the high feels. I feel like I just keep ramping up and up, I feel like I’m being launched into outer space.

I uh… I’m gonna go lay down again.