I Will Not Suffer In Silence

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.

Today I’m back to work, but george has been buggin me.

Yesterday, I was told I could stay home from work because the substitute nanny they’d gotten could do two straight days. It’s a good thing I stayed home, too. I was fine from the time I woke at 8am until 12pm.

During the morning, I had not stayed bedridden, but I had not exerted myself, nor did I fall to any cravings or any forbidden foods. I sorted paperwork while standing for a bit, because I was so tired of being on my butt and/or my back. Even before the pain hit on Monday at 5am, I’d spent Saturday and Sunday in bed for much of the day because I was severely exhausted, either from george or from the antibiotics or both.

Noon on the dot yesterday, george returned with a gush and then the searing pain. I took 800mg Ibuprofen and a whole Tylenol 3.

George faded again by around 6:30pm, and I spotted for the rest of the night. Our neighbor swung by and took me and my husband to her friend’s house after 8pm, and we watched the season premiere of Lost, season 5. I am HOOKED on that show! LOVE it.

Though the bleeding subsided, I was left with a very tender pelvic area all night. This left me worried, wondering if the severe pain was going to return again, wondering if all that pelvic tenderness was clots because I spent so much time bedridden. I swear, my pelvic region felt like it did after surgery - super tender to the touch right above the pubic line, and sloshy/bloated feeling. This cycle, I also had pain in the urinary tract, which I rarely get, even though endometriosis is on the bladder. I’m thinking that was caused by the antibiotics. I have forgotten for the past two days to take my probiotic pill to balance out what the antibiotic is wiping out of my system in order to have cured the sinus infection (which is all cleared up now btw and antibiotics are all done).

Today I returned to work. My body was fine again until 12pm. The low back pain hit, first. I was sitting on the couch watching the baby empty out her toybox, and I bent forward to interact with her and OW! sudden sharp pain in the lower back, on the left side. It’s a deep pain, not a superficial strain pain. It’s the pain I always get with george. As soon as that pain hit, I knew the pelvic pain would be next. I looked at the clock, remarking aloud that it was probably noon, and sure enough, 12:02pm.

WHAT THE HELL.

I remember years ago, I was so confounded by this 24-hour (and sometimes 12-hour) prompt returning of symptoms, that I checked ocean tides to see if my body was following those. I may have even looked at the lunar cycle at some point in my life, too.
Alas, none of it matched up. I’m guessing my body has its own tide, in accordance with hormones or something.

I popped 800mg as soon as the pelvic pain followed the back pain. I started spotting a little heavier.
Thankfully, the pain and bleeding did not ramp up further than a 3 on the Mankoski Pain Scale, and the Ibuprofen seems to have done the trick in beating back what pain there was.

I have NOT started the antibiotics yet. It’s complicated. The short story is that I’ve reached my breaking point in not being treated accordingly for my health condition; namely, that I have an autoimmune disorder which needs specialised care as opposed to symptom-based care.

The long story:

On Monday, I went to the doctor on self-diagnosis of sinus infection, and I wanted confirmation as to whether this was the case. I expected to get my ears, nose and throat looked at, the lymph nodes in my neck examined, rule out an ear infection, and possibly get scheduled for x-ray to rule out sinus infection.

None of that happened. Instead, I was flat out denied anything but over the counter drugs (Mucinex, Ocean® brand nasal spray, Tylenol), and was told to come back in 4 days if I was not better to get a prescription for Xanax, to take along with Sudafed, because I’d noted that I would not take Sudafed because the pseudoephedrine makes my heart race and gives me panic attacks.

I called the doctor’s office 2 days later and complained about my doctor. I demanded to be seen by another doctor. Instead of an appointment being made to be seen and properly looked at, another doctor prescribed antibiotics over the phone.

Result: I have no idea what I’ve got. I only have my assumptions. Does this even get documented in my medical file? How do I establish a pattern to tie it in w/ the immune deficiency stuff?

Here is part of my health profile:

• Endometriosis is an autoimmune disease.
  

• When I was 6 years old, I became allergic to the weekly allergy shots I was being given. My ma said the pediatrician told her I was allergic to my own germs. What that translated to, and I didn’t know it for years, was a giant red flag. Being allergic to your own germs means you have an autoimmune disorder. Instead of ma getting me some specialised care, she dropped the ball entirely. Why? Because we were butt-ass poor. So I grew up being sick constantly, which cost her more in the long run emotionally and financially.
  

• I have suffered from acute sinus infections since childhood, and it is known that “Acute sinusitis is much more common in certain patients than in the general population. For example, sinusitis occurs more often in patients with reduced immune function”. I even developed bronchitis at least once every two years through high school. It didn’t help that my ma is to this day a pack-a-day smoker who keeps the house sealed up, so I had to grow up a smoker along with her, even though I gagged and breathed shallow and lived in my bedroom to try to avoid it.
  

• When I was 21 years old, I developed acute pancreatitis, which can also be triggered by autoimmune disease. The E.R. doctor chalked it up to me being an alcoholic, because I was 21 years old, in college, and it was New Year’s Eve. What he didn’t care about was my history of severe allergies, the fact that I was raised extreme Christian and was working as a toddler teacher for a Christian daycare. Does this look like a raging alcoholic to you???
  

• In 2006, I was doing diet elimination for pain management of the endometriosis, and when I added back in wheat and yeast, my body flipped out. My allergist strongly suspects Celiac Disease and wants me to go for an endoscopy but so far, I’ve been a bit skittish and have just been abstaining from glutenous foods in the meantime.
  

• For most of my life, if not all of it, I’ve had a low body temperature. Normal for me is 97.4°F. I’ve read that it’s still within the normal range, and numerous thyroid blood tests over the years have come back negative for hypothyroidism, but I think it’s wrong that I’m always freezing cold. On a 90°F day, I can catch a chill taking a nap.

There’s more, but like the thyroid issue, other stuff still needs official confirmation/diagnosis for me to start really talking about it.
So I am mad. I want correct treatment again, based upon my medical condition, not being moved along like cattle on a conveyor belt.

For too many years, I have not received proper care. I think the last time any doctor tried to look into my entire medical history and treat me accordingly was a doctor down in San Jose. That’s about seven years ago. I can’t even remember her name, for shame.

When we go to a doctor’s office, we expect personalised care. If I wanted conveyor belt treatment, I’d go to a walk-in clinic. This is how my doctor’s office seems to be run. I disapprove. I am sending a complaint letter and based upon the reply I get (if any at all), I may have to shop for a new doctor’s office all together.

And in the meantime, I’ll start the antibiotics Real Soon Now. I have an appointment with the new doctor on the 24th, but I’m not sure I can wait that long. My ears are threatening to explode. Taking 1200mg twice a day of the Mucinex has not expelled forth the mucous as promised, nor has the neti pot and nasal spray helped.

I’ve hit the 10-day mark with being sick with a cold/sinus crap. I keep hearing that people have been sick for over a month with this.

It’s been migrating into my ears, which is why I went to the doctor the other day. Today is even worse. Headache won’t stop despite 1000mg Tylenol, continued neti pot flushings, 1200mg Mucinex twice daily, Ocean brand salt spray applied throughout the day, zinc and vitamin C twice daily, lots of fluids, and laying on my side (alternating) to drain the Maxillary sinuses.

On my way to work this morning, I got a killer headache, my ears became more plugged, I developed light and sound sensitivity (which has been intermittent for days but is now continuous), and my frontal sinuses are the source of the major head pain at this time, rather than the maxillary sinuses. The snorking of snot has produced what I told Dr. Fisher it would - a bloody nose.

I called the doctor’s office this morning and filed a complaint against Dr. Fisher. I put in a request for a new doctor to be named as my primary (I have PPO coverage which means I don’t need a primary, but I want one assigned because my health condition warrants that SOMEONE be a stable point of contact. I’ve learned this over the years - all my medical file needs to be in one place and one person securing the knowledge. The problem seems to be that doctors PREFER to NOT know all the details about patients anymore, and just treat us like cattle on a conveyor belt).

I’ve had an on-call nurse call me back already for more info, and asked if my doctor had discussed antibiotics. HAHAHAHA! NICE.
I launched into a tirade against the doctor, and the nurse said she’d have an on-call doctor call me back and likely prescribe the antibiotics.

On top of all of this, the Endometriosis symptoms have started, because I’m due on Sunday (in 4 days). It started yesterday afternoon, with moderate jabbing pain in the left pelvic/ovarian region, and migrated down my leg (as Endo is known to do).

Despite the endometriosis pain, I couldn’t take not being able to enjoy the warm sunny weather any longer, and so yesterday I took the baby I care for for a stroller ride down to the local seaside car park and back. It was a total of a half a mile round trip, and it’s all my body could take because I’ve not had much exercise in the past couple of months due to various reasons and excuses.

Today the pain is centered low in the uterus, near the bladder (that’s where the remaining disease was at time of diagnosis and had to be left in me to grow, because removing the disease from the bladder would have punctured my bladder and I’d have been on a cath for the rest of my life). It’s a dull, continuous pain, and radiates down both inner legs to my knees. This is ‘normal’ behaviour for the endo for me. I feel like I should check myself every half hour or so, because it feels like I could start at any second. This is also ‘normal’ for me.

The fatigue should set in full force by Friday. As if I’ve not been out of breath and tired as it is from being sick.

I understand getting sick. I just want prompt treatment. While healthy people can just let it run its course, I can’t afford to do that. And I’m tried of proving this to the doctors.

AHA! The on-call nurse just called back. A new doctor is faxing in a request for Zithromax for me right now.

FASCINATING.

So we have two ends of the spectrum, folks; doctors who absolutely refuse to prescribe antibiotics out of fear of contributing to drug-resistant bacteria, and doctors who still let patients dictate when they need antibiotics. And what happened to the in-between? You know, the throat culture swab? Looking with a scope in my ears, nose and throat?

Despite my strong desire to have this illness remedied ASAP, it’d still be nice to know EXACTLY WHAT IT IS, because it needs to be documented in my charts as part of my history. Not just, “pt req antibiotics” or somesuch without further explanation.

Yeah yeah I know, I’m never happy. It’s just that the medical industry, at least in the U.S., is seriously flawed and needs a major overhaul.