I Will Not Suffer In Silence

I enjoyed a mere four pain-free days before pelvic pain returned. I don’t know if this was early mittelschmerz or what, but on September 9 and 10, I endured intermittent stinging and stabbing in the uterus all day long.

Then, on September 11, I had to contend with dyspareunia all day. I had intense low back pain with stabbing uterine and cervical pain all day after intimacy.

For two days after being intimate with my husband, I had right side stabbing ovarian pain all day. It made me cry out “OW!” or yelp in pain each time. Around 4pm on September 12, there was continuous pulsing pain for several minutes, and on September 13 I had intermittent stabbing ovarian pain all day again. Despite this, I bicycled to and from work on September 12 and 14.

I was able to enjoy three more pain-free days from September 14 to September 16.

On September 17 (my birthday), dyspareunia ruined all the fun again, and lasted for two days.

I then had three pain-free days before the pre-menstrual pain cycle set in on September 22. To make things worse, I contracted an intestinal virus, which caused mean stomach pain on September 23, leading to diarrhea, which lasted for two days. I felt like I could die. My entire body ached and my mood was more foul than my worst PMS.

Speaking of PMS…stomach flu aside, I have to say that this month’s PMS was the most aggressive and depressing since I was on synthetic hormones. The level of rage I had in the past two weeks equals that which I experienced when I was on Yasmin back in 2007. I phoned my mother to ask when she started menopause, and she thinks it was right around the time we moved houses back in 1983, which would put her at 39 years of age. She gave several instances of being a raging psycho hose beast from hell (which my diaries corroborate).

Well here I am at age 40…so I wonder if I’m starting down the path to menopause. Half of me shouts HOORAY! because the hope is that with menopause, the endometriosis will burn out.
The other half of me is freaking the eff out for two reasons: #1 I still look, act and feel like I’m in my late 20s, and #2 all the other crap that goes with menopause is terrifying to ponder.

Going back to the whole pelvic pain thing…
On September 25, I attended the annual Alameda Home Tour, despite getting over the stomach flu and enduring more pre-menstrual cramps. I was on Tylenol 3 and Ibuprofen all day, but not to the point of stupor - I took half pills of Tylenol 3.

To cap off the day on September 25, I developed a migraine.

I have started tracking the migraines. I also had a migraine back on September 7, and I complained on facebook that I felt like I was having an increase in migraines each month ever since my surgery last December. My friend Wanda is the one who told me it could be tied to my cycle, and to start tracking it, so I went back as far as I could online and in my iCal to see if there was a connection.

Well wouldn’t you know it, there IS, and it goes back YEARS:

September 7, 2011 - Migraine lasting several hours (two days after period ended. Also, it was 86F outside and I was at work in the heat for a couple of hours, then bicycled home).

April 27, 2011 - mild to moderate cramps, migraine from hell, lasting 5 hrs (on first day of period)

January 19, 2011 - light to moderate pelvic pain two days after my period started, “with migraine that lasted five hours, then major pelvic pain and bleeding with cramps at 11pm.”

October 12, 2010 - Migraine noted in facebook (1 day after period ended)

January 29, 2010 - Migraine lasting for several hours on same day spotting started.

January 8, 2010 - Migraine noted in facebook (During period)

December 26, 2009 - Migraine noted in facebook (during Mittelschmerz)

July 9, 2009 - pounding headache two days before period.

April 6, 2009 - moderate headache on 4th day of period.

January 26, 2009 - Migraine noted in facebook (3 days after george ended)

In all, during my supposed uptime, I enjoyed TEN total pain-free days, which were non consecutive. This is dismal compared to the last few months.

September 1: Day two of george. Took half a Tylenol 3 by 10:30am while at work because the pain kept ramping up. Came home from work after only three-and-a-half hours there, took a full Tylenol 3 and went to bed. Slept for five hours, completely missing my appointment with my shrink. I was bedridden from 2:30pm - 7:30pm, and couch-ridden for the rest of the night. Called everyone I needed to for work to let them know I probably would not be in the next day.

September 2: Tried to go to work, despite the pain, because I’m afraid of being fired (the PTSD from the company who fired me in 2007 for missing work due to the pain still wells up every month). I took 600mg of Ibuprofen before work in an effort to stave off the pain.

I came home after one hour.

I took half a Tylenol 3 when I got home, took another 600mg of ibuprofen at 12:30pm, and also took another half Tylenol 3 at 12:30pm. I cannot remember how much more Tylenol 3 I had that day.

We had a standing invite with our friends that night, so I tried it out. They live up one flight of stairs now, instead of three, but any stairs are a nightmare for a person suffering from chronic pain. I slowly climbed the stairs, holding onto the railing like one who is holding a rope to climb a rock. The thing is, one of our two friends who lives there also suffers from chronic pelvic pain (fibroids) and back injuries, so having one flight instead of three flights of stairs to climb is a definite improvement for her.
While visiting, I was able to sit in a chair and chat with our friends. We did not play card games or board games that night, which was for the best, because minimal movement was best for me. Sitting upright in a chair or reaching back and forth across a table for a table top game would not have worked out for me. I was on Tylenol 3 and Ibuprofen while at our friends’ house, but again I cannot remember how much I took in total that day.

September 3: Saturday. The cramps were very heavy that day, but the bleeding was subsiding. This was the day of the annual Scottish Highland Games. Again being stubborn, I did not want to miss this event, so my husband and I agreed to bring the wheelchair along. I was in minimal pain, but I still popped 400mg Ibuprofen and a half a Tylenol 3 just to make sure I was ahead of the pain game. I was coherent all the way to the fairgrounds. My husband got the wheelchair out of the trunk and I pushed it. I walked slower than my normal pace so as not to stir the hornet’s nest of pain, but by the time we made it from the car to the front gate, the pain had returned.

I ended up taking a total of 2 Tylenol 3 that day, and 1,200mg of Ibuprofen if I recall correctly. I alternated between pushing my wheelchair and being pushed in it, but I was so drugged that I walked in a stupor. I felt like a mental patient whenever I was pushing the wheelchair. I felt the usual embarrassment with having to rely upon the wheelchair, but I did not let it consume me.

My dashing husband

Already exhausted from the pain, but ready to see the games

Caber toss

Caber toss

Weight For Height competition

Weight For Height - ball

Wheelchair bound

Standing upright - towards the end of the day

Glad I had my spare spoon with me!

 
September 4: Sunday. Again, we had plans to be somewhere, and I refused to let the pain stop me from living my life. I was experiencing moderate to severe low back pain, and intermittent pelvic pain, but I gave the thumbs up to attend the monthly Alameda Antiques Fair. I was in search of a dress and accoutrements for my upcoming birthday party, which was to be a 1930s costume theme.

I was on Tylenol 3 and Ibuprofen all day. I cannot remember how much I took. I had my wheelchair in trunk of my husband’s car, but I did not use it. However, I did want it at times, but I wasn’t as bad off as I was the previous day, pain-wise. I rested often and walked slow. Bleeding had slowed, and I spotted all day.

Giant flea market on Alameda Naval Base (photo from web)

 
September 5: Monday. Labor Day - I was off work. I was feeling much better, and my energy was up, but so was my anxiety for some reason. I was near panic attack all day.

The next day, I was back to work. It was my uptime, at last!

So I made it to the end of August. I only missed one day of work (on August 8, during the last cycle).

I’m starting off September by missing half a day of work on the 1st. I am likely to miss the entire day of work on September 2nd. I cannot reach anyone to sub for me for the whole day, though one teacher said she’d cover me for the early morning daycare-before-school-starts shift.

Yesterday was the first day of george. Right as I was about to go out the door to work, the cramps began, so I did actually take 600mg of Ibuprofen before work. Then I began spotting while at work, but I still made it through an entire work day.

The pain ramped up last night while I was at a friend’s house checking out their place for party space for my upcoming birthday. I took half a Tylenol 3 but the pain and bleeding kept ramping up. When I got home, I think I took a whole Tylenol 3 and went to bed. I can’t remember.

This morning, despite the pain and bleeding, I ingested 600mg of Ibuprofen again and went in to work. I lasted til 10:30am, when I could stand it no longer and took a half Tylenol 3.

An hour later, with the pain still ramping up and nausea also welling up, I quit five minutes before my lunch break. I went in search of people to fill in for me for the rest of the day. I shuffled around the building, found two people to help me out, and listed the gaps in coverage for the secretary to help figure out the rest, and I came home.

I ate a full Tylenol 3 with my lunch at 12:30pm, and was bedridden from 2:30pm - 7:30pm.
Whoops, this means I completely missed the appointment with my shrink.
I’ve been groggy and couch-ridden for the rest of the night. It’s 9:38pm now and I’m just now entertaining the idea of dinner. Normally I’m prepping for bed by now.

I’ve already notified everyone’s voicemails that I likely won’t be in tomorrow.

Sad, disappointed and depressed describe my current state of mind. I wasn’t bedridden in February, March, April, May or June. I was couch-ridden from the pain in July and August, and now officially bedridden and couch-ridden in September.

The caffeine and sugar have got to stop. I’ve said this before. I know what a huge challenge this is for me. I might even need to go vegetarian again. My caffeine intake rose sharply at the end of June, so I am definitely blaming my rekindled addiction for part of the pain. Caffeine is a known inflammatory agent. I reintroduced white meat (birds only) towards the end of May or sometime in June. I’ll cut caffeine and sugar, first, then wait a few months to see what all evens out before deciding if meat has to go again, too.

Stress management is also key, but I’ve already set that in motion with the Alexander Technique and Yoga classes, and the monthly acupuncture (too bad I can only get monthly acupuncture through the dispensary, but I’ll work with what I’ve got available). I just need to remember to also add in the daily progressive relaxation tips again.

This too shall pass.

During this month’s uptime, I accomplished the following through the Prop 215 dispensary:

• Attended two Alexander Technique weekly classes.
• Attended one Iyengar Yoga weekly class (I would have gone to a second class but work held me over)
• Got free acupuncture

 
During this month’s uptime, I accomplished the following:

• spent several hours aboard the U.S.S. Hornet walking around, ascending and descending stairs, and sitting on hard floors
• attended two going-away parties back to back
• got reeeeeeeally drunk
• went to the circus for father-in-law’s birthday request
• bicycled to work three days in a row, for a total of 8 miles
• went for walks
• continued my yoga lessons nearly every night before bed
• helped pack away a classroom of its summer theme and helped prep it and another classroom for the coming school year

 
Along with the getting drunk part, I also ingested more caffeine and more sugar than I should have allowed myself to do. I felt stressed out this whole month. My sister-in-law was hospitalised with a pulmonary embolism (she’s now home and managing it with medication), and the aftermath of my drunkening had me seriously in the doghouse with my husband, and had me feeling very depressed for a whole week. Oh, and both of these things happened the same exact week. Being on the U.S.S. Hornet was draining, because it required heightened psychic sense (we were ghost hunting), and there was some national news that triggered me emotionally (also in the same week as my sister-in-law’s hospitalisation). The week of August 14 - 20 was a really bad week.

Despite the emotional roller coaster, I experienced SIXTEEN, count ‘em 16 pain-free days in a row! Sixteen consecutive pain-free days!

WOW! I definitely have a trend showing itself five months after surgery!
From May to June’s cycle, I had 20 consecutive pain-free days.
From June to July’s cycle, I had 17 consecutive pain-free days.
From July to August’s cycle, I’ve had 16 consecutive pain-free days.

This is AWESOME.

What’s even better is that no matter what I’ve done to myself diet-wise, the number of pain-free days has barely wavered. Not that I’m gonna go on a booze, caffeine and sugar binge from here on out, mind you. That shit still affects my mood something fierce.

I will say that this month’s PMS has been HELLISH. Perhaps that is tied to the poor diet. I’m angsty, depressed, angry, weepy, and desirous to claw myself out of my own skin. I feel like a three-year-old who can’t tell you what the trouble is and who resorts to screaming and kicking everything in site.

The libido thing is about the same as it is for many women with endometriosis - I enjoyed three intimate days this entire month. There were three in July, two in June, one in May, two in April, two in March, FOUR in February, and three in January. None of that has changed much since surgery, because due to endometriosis, I’m also diagnosed with dyspareunia, which happens with deep penetration. The cramps can often last for days, and the deep cramps not something I want happening between cycles, during my “uptime” or my sacred pain-free time zone. Thankfully, truly thankfully, I have a life partner who understands and respects this, as rough as it can be emotionally for him to have to deal with on his end. My husband is a super hero. We’ve been together for 11 years, and have been married for almost three. :)

I fear today may be my last day of work before I’m stuck at home in pain again for a day or three. I’m hoping I won’t miss work at all this week. On Monday, I required 600mg of Ibuprofen to get through the workday. On Tuesday, I required 1,000mg of Ibuprofen. Both days, I woke up feeling like a Mack truck ran over me. My muscles have been tired, my joints have been aching. I have increased my calcium/magnesium intake, and I’m trying to add more green vegetables to my diet for iron. I should be taking my iron supplement - I’ll do that at lunch today.
So far today - Wednesday - I have not needed to take ibuprofen. I’m heading off to work right now. Wish me luck!

My Prop 215 card expired in July, and I finally scraped up the money to renew it so I could start up the pain-management services again. I saw Dr. Ellis last weekend and paid the $135 to renew my prescription for another year. He asked me if I’ve had any adverse reactions to the medical marijuana, and I told him again about my reaction to trying out CBD.

Dr. Ellis replied that I should not be renewing my Prop 215 card at all, then, and he’d like to make the recommendation in my file that I quit ASAP. I told him that it’s not the medical marijuana I’m after - I haven’t had any in a year. What I’m after are the free pain-management services that come with having a Prop 215 card. I told him that since April, 2011, I have been without health insurance (my husband’s job downsized in December, but continued to give us health benefits until April).

Dr. Ellis understood my request and wrote down in my file that I react adversely to any form of marijuana, but that I may continue to renew my card for dispensary services and discounts. Yay! That’s all I wanted, so I’m a happy camper.

I also filed a name change. I’ve been married for three years but just got off my lazy ass to do the name change this year. After my appointment with Dr. Ellis, I phoned up my local dispensary and made an appointment for the Alexander Technique.

The next day, at the dispensary however, they could not process my name change (some company they had to call was not open that day - maybe it was Dr. Ellis himself), so I simply rescheduled it for today. My name change was processed on Monday and so today I was able to go to the class. The instructor I saw last summer is still there, and remembered me and the illness I suffer from. I received a warm welcome and had a good class with three other students, one of whom I also remember from last summer. :)

The dispensary also offers yoga, chiropractic, reiki, naturopathy, acupuncture and hypnotherapy. I’m going to try to get in on the yoga, chiropractic and acupuncture classes, since they are offered after work hours.
I’d love to go to the reiki and hypnotherapy classes; alas, they happen during work hours.

I am due on August 31st but have not had any mittelschmerz or other pelvic pain since my last cycle ended. I made it through the day of work on August 10 and so the clock was set for uptime.
While I have not utilised my uptime to its fullest this time around, by getting back into the swing of pain management, I feel that I still can do a lot before the next cycle. :)

I was couch-ridden for three days during the August cycle; Saturday, Sunday and Monday. What made it more convenient for me to not push my limits this time around was the fact that my husband was away at a game convention. Normally on Saturdays, we bum around town running errands or just being out of the house for fun. Because he wasn’t here, I not only lacked the desire to be out and about, but I had no one to drive me around while I was all medicated to the hilt.

Had my cycle fallen during the work week, I would likely have missed THREE days of work. Thankfully, it fell on the weekend again. So in the grand scheme of things, I’m still getting lucky so to speak.

I woke up Tuesday morning unsure of whether I could go in to work. The bleeding subsided overnight again for the second night in a row. Unlike Monday when I woke and the bleeding and pain resumed, on Tuesday there was no such mess. Figuring Tuesday was “Last Gasp” day, I thought that if I did go in to work, I’d maybe get two or three hours in before I’d have to go home in grave pain again. But I called work, cleared it with the director, and went in. I chanced it.

And you know what? The Last Gasp never happened! Or rather, perhaps it did, because a little bleeding did resume during the course of the day, but the pain level never got above a 4 the entire day! I did require 1,200mg of Ibuprofen in an 8-hour time frame to get through the work day, but I did NOT have to come home early in agony! This to me is simply amazing!!!

The bleeding tapered and stopped by late afternoon.

My husband took me out to sushi and ice cream last night. :)

This morning, I’m back to feeling uncertain again. I’m still spotting, and I had an uptick in hormonal hot flush and nausea again before breakfast. Because I feel like I got away with something yesterday (no ‘last gasp’), I am now worrying that today might be it, even though it’s not logical according to the ‘usual’ behaviour of my cycle. I should technically be home-free until August 31st.

We’ll see. If I make it through today, then I’m golden for sure.

On Sunday, July 31, I was driving with my husband when suddenly my lower back screamed in agony, leading me to cry out in a high-pitched wail mid-sentence. The stabbing pain lasted less than 30 seconds and was gone without a trace. What the hell!?

The very next day, PMS set in just over a week before I was due, in the form of Cleaning All The Things™Allie Brosh. The day after that, I got left side ovarian stabby pains, which lasted for two straight days. I ate a lot of Ibuprofen.
At this point, I knew the party uptime was over. I actually became quite depressed about this.

Befuddled by my depression, knowing I have dealt with this illness for almost 26 years now, I wrote the following:

Dear Steph:
You must acknowledge that you have entered Downtime. You are not lazy, you are not slacking - it is just time to go. You cannot fight this. You are Persephone. Just go to the Underworld quietly and do your time, as you have done for two and a half decades. You will emerge again - you always do. Stop thinking diet or depression or laziness might be bringing on the pain. It’s none of that. Just go under and do your time. Look out the window or go outside and enjoy the sunlight for one more day, but mark my words, by the end of today, you will either go of your own power or I will take you forcibly. Stop whining - you’ll be back by Monday. Sheesh. Be thankful that it’s only a cumulative of 3 months out of every year you spend in the Underworld. It could be consecutive. You don’t want that, do you?
-Hades

Still getting left side stabby ovarian pain, and having struggled through a hypoglycemic morning, I got my ass up off the couch and said, “FINE! I will go and enjoy the sunlight for one more day, you bastard!”
Well, I said a lot more cuss words than that, but you get the point.

I put on some sweats, a tee shirt, bicycle arm warmers, knee braces, bike helmet and off I went for a bicycle ride while my laundry was washing.

Here's me telling endo what it can do with itself.

Foeniculum vulgare (fennel), a pretty but invasive plant on our shoreline, along with Spartina alterniflora x foliosa (smooth cord grass), another horrible invasive, in the background.

My highest speed that day was actually 17 M.P.H. -pretty good for one on the verge of an endo flare.

After two days of stabbing pain, I then spent the next four days dealing with hypoglycemic attacks while my body went down the drain hormonally.
Despite all that, I still managed to exercise every day that week leading up to menses. I weight-lifted, I did aerobics, I bicycled, I cleaned house like a rabid meth fiend. After the bicycling, I got nauseous and weak in the way that only I know means it was pre-menstrually-related.

On Friday, August 5, the vaginal mucosa turned pink, and I knew the do0m was upon me.

So naturally I went dancing.

I wanted to go out to a club, but I could not predict how rapidly my body might go downhill, and besides, I’m flat broke financially after the traveling I did this summer, so I stayed in and held Club Steph:

Club Steph: A Gothic Nightclub Of One, held irregularly.

In short, I went to the underworld to do my downtime kicking and screaming, like I always do. After dancing, the nausea set back in. Nausea has been big during this menstrual cycle, making me think I have another ovarian cyst.

Regarding the kicking and screaming…before my second surgery even happened, I had regressed to a crying, sputtering three-year-old, throwing a fit every time I was about to go into downtime again. After 25 years, I’d just had enough of it. I was no longer stoic, I was no longer accepting of my fate, or even willing to work with what uptime I had each month.

I had a lot of hope that the second surgery would give me more uptime, and you know what, IT DID, but not enough so that an employer would notice. This is what keeps my stress level up - the fact that I know there was some benefit to both surgeries to my quality of life, but yet it didn’t make enough of a difference to employers. I had to call in sick today, and I wonder if I’ll be well enough to go in tomorrow. This of course makes my employer unhappy. She has stated to my face that she is concerned about putting me in a head teaching position because of my illness. Because she has not denied me of the position yet, I cannot take action. Because all of her discriminatory remarks as regards my illness have been verbal, I don’t have much solid proof of things to take action with, and so I am in a constant state of mental anguish and a feeling of gross job insecurity.

In order to feel a bit more justified and dignified, I went back through the past five years’ worth of data on my menstrual cycles. It looks like it wasn’t until December, 2008 that I caught on to the idea of trying to pinpoint when mittelschmerz was happening.
Though I had caught on to the idea of tracking my uptime between cycles in November, 2007, it remained an abstraction. It wasn’t actually until August, 2010 that I actively employed this tactic on my calendar.

We already know that my first surgery in 2007 barely helped me in the grand scheme of things. Sadly, I did not have the tracking discipline that I now have going on, and I use the term ‘discipline’ loosely.
All I remember from the 2007 surgery is that it felt like I gained a week of uptime back in my life each month. This means that instead of getting pain and other symptoms two weeks before menstruating, I was, after surgery, only experiencing pain a week to a few days before menstruating. This meant that my uptime between cycles had lengthened.
Once menses hit, however, I was still bedridden every month and missing work. That part hadn’t changed a bit.

I wanted to find out if my second surgery fared better, so I have spent the last two days going through my calendar and my blog posts to gather data. Again, record-keeping was crappy in 2008 and pretty much non-existent in 2007 going by calendar alone, so I just focused on the past two-and-a-half years’ worth of data.

You can see immediately that surgery provided benefit where job loss and uptime is concerned. The fact that I’m still missing one day of work per cycle is still troubling to my employer of course, but dammit, I’ll take what I can get. Check it out:

It’s not much, but it’s what I have to work with. And I did all this data compiling while stoned out of my head on Tylenol 3. Too bad I am completely useless in my current line of work when I’m on the Tylenol 3. Maybe I should just go back to tech work and find a job working from home full time.

One last thing that is very important to note for my morale:

I had my second surgery in December, 2010. Upon recovery, I was not bedridden from endometriosis in February, March, April, May or June. I was couch-ridden from the pain in July and August, but there has been moderate nausea with these last two cycles, and as I keep saying, I think there’s an ovarian cyst going on, on top of the endometriosis. But I have not spent 12+ hour days in bed in my pajamas with the heating pads on me at all hours of the day and night like I used to before surgery. This is a vast improvement over the first surgery I had in 2007.

There is still hope that my condition will improve. I just need to get back on track with the dietary restrictions. I lapsed from May onwards due to graduation, travel to see family, and general summertime fun. I need to cut sugar and alcohol again. It will be difficult. I will cry again. I will wail and gnash teeth over it like I did last time, but I’m doing this to further the benefit of surgery.

During my July uptime, I spent part of a day helping my husband with the technical side of his website, which felt good because it reassured me that even though I’ve been out of the computer industry for the past four years, I still know enough Linux to get around. My husband uses WordPress for his blog (like I do for this blog). Making the blog look exactly how you want it to involves a bit of waving dead chickens over the evil php files. I prefer to use ssh and edit the files in vi, because I’m awesome.

Anyway, the same day, we got a replacement bed, since our Keetsa mattress failed us. Thankfully it is under warranty. A bit of housecleaning and mattress wrangling was required, so chalk that into the “exercise” category for the day, heh…

I also was a bad monkey in July. Our friends, whom we crossed the country to see all married back in June, came out to visit those who could not be their on their wedding day. We were fortunate to hook up with our newlywed friends the day before they were to jet back home. We went to the tiki bar and I got blotto. Ah well. I love to tiki.
I did penance the next few days after that by bicycling to and from work.

Speaking of work, that was the week I was telling you about! I was a head teacher, even with a hangover! Wooo! I’m totally badass. I survived the week perfectly, despite two parent issues I thought might become nasty. Parents are crazy. I say this not having once ounce of parenting experience in my body. :p

I celebrated the end of the week of teaching by meeting with a tattoo artist. I hope to get a back piece by Winter Break. :D
I had wanted the tattoo by the time of my birthday, but I did not manage my money well … again.
This will be my first ever tattoo! I have body piercings, but I’ve always been too afraid to commit to a tat. The thing is, I’ve had the same idea in my head for a back piece since the early 1990s. I think it’s about time I finally committed.

So I had a good time during July uptime. I was free of endometriosis pain for three days before mittelschmerz, which lasted only a day. Then I was pain-free again for nine whole days before I got a jabby lower back pain, and then I was pain-free for another whole day before the slide to downtime began.

The uptime was a total of 13 days, of which nine were consecutively pain-free.

July 14 was our eleven-year dating anniversary. We had celebrated early this year, when we took a trip to Boston to see a friend get married. On our actual anniversary day, I experienced moderate low back pain and fatigue. I was still spotting from the previous day, though I knew this was the last of it for this cycle.

Despite the pain, I had an appointment that afternoon in town, and I chose to walk to it. It was a mile round-trip walk, and I was dismayed at how much pain my legs, thighs and hips were in after said walk. This alarmed me, because just three weeks earlier, I had walked all over Cambridge, Salem and Boston, Massachusetts. The bulk of my pain then was foot- and calf-related, because I’d chosen the wrong footwear.

After my appointment on July 14, I went on to babysit for a friend around the block. That was low-key and doable, because the kid is a third-grader.

July 15 also found me in moderate low back pain, but I would not be denied a night of dancing. It had been three weeks since I’d been dancing (I danced a bit at my friend’s wedding), and I was itching to get out. Besides, it was another friend’s birthday celebration, so I wanted to meet her there. A night out and dancing was successful. :)

I rested on Saturday the 16th, and then we did the big 10km charity walk on the 17th. This is the walk we do every year. My husband and I have been team captains for three years now, ever since our friends nominated us for the position when they went off to raise pure-bred puppies for a second living.

Because my husband and I had so much going on this year, we did not devote enough energy to fundraising or team cheerleading, and as a result, we saw our lowest numbers for actual team members on the day of the walk (there were four of us total), and we did not raise enough interest to even print up the team shirts this year. Quite sad. Still, we made the best of the situation. So far, nearly $900 has been raised from our tiny team this year, and the final tally still isn’t in, yet.

Here’s a couple photos of us:

Doing the AIDS Walk, 2011

I brought my spare spoon to help me through the walk!

 
For the next four days after the walk, I was miserable. I had pulled every muscle from my hips down to my toes, and my feet and toes were blistered. I think this was the most injured I’ve felt from this charity walk. I don’t know what happened. I’ve been able to go hiking right after a cycle. This to me appeared no different. Meh. I guess I’ve just gotten very out of shape since surgery last December. I haven’t been good at bicycling or walking around town like I was before surgery. I have to change that.

On Thursday, July 21, I experienced moderate stabby pain - this would be a few days early for mittelschmerz, I think, but hey, who knows with me.

Today is Saturday and I’m helping my husband out at home. Next week I work as a head teacher for summer school. I am excited and terrified all at the same time. ;)

I’m happy to be back in uptime, and I need to get with the exercising, already. I have been doing stretches for the past two days, so that’s something at least.

12:50pm:
A break in the debilitating pain overnight. Everything ceased, but for the throbbing low back pain. I was fine this morning, til a few minutes ago. This is the last attack - the ‘last gasp’ as my husband calls it - then I’m golden for a couple of weeks.

But right now, I’d rather be out of my body while this is happening. There’s a vice grip on my left ovary, and it’s twisting. The pain is causing moderate nausea.

1:49pm:
I just spent the past half hour doing an acupressure move as found in “Fibroid Tumors & Endometriosis Self Help Book” by Susan M. Lark. I added something to the position, though. I had tried it her way years ago, but in 2007 I found by adding a heating pad under the lower back while laying down increased the pain relief by a lot. So I did that again today when the pain had ramped up too quickly for me to get meds down.

 
Now I’m sitting straight up against the arm of the couch, cross-legged, with two heating pads behind me. I’m still waiting for all this to pass; there’s been very little blood with all this terrible pain. At least the drugs have kicked in for the dissociative part. Forgot to mention earlier - as soon as the pain hit, it immediately spiked, and I downed a whole Tylenol 3 and three Advil gel-caps. I swear, I shot it with some brandy, hoping it would help the drugs absorb into my bloodstream faster. Seems to have worked, though it’s speculation at this point. I got the idea from “The Oil-Protein Diet Cookbook”, by Johanna Budwig. In it, she mentions serving some champagne to the very ill person with their meal so that everything, including the patient’s meds, absorbs faster. Well I didn’t have any champagne, so I worked with what I had.