Hello, everyone. I’m sorry I haven’t been around much in the past 3 years.
It all started with this website being hijacked by hackers in 2012. It took me several months to resolve the issue and get the site back up and running again.
Merely 12 days after getting my site back up and running, the discovery of my spouse having an affair ended my world.
After that, I didn’t have much interest in updating this website, or tracking my pain symptoms in my blog, because I no longer wanted to live.
I had to be hospitalised – in the loony bin – over my emotional trauma from the affair.
And who here is surprised? Endometriosis causes 19% of relationships to end.
So if the current stats are that 1 in 10, or approximately 176 million women worldwide have endometriosis, and endo causes 19% of relationships to end, then that’s roughly 33-34 million women worldwide who not only will suffer from endo, but who will also suffer an emotional trauma of their relationship ending, because their partner could not deal with the pain they are in.
I am a statistic. I am one in ten worldwide who have endo. I am one of those 33 million women who have been cheated on and abandoned – marriage vows violated – because my partner could not deal with living with a partner in chronic, debilitating pain. MORE THAN THAT, THOUGH, IT WAS BECAUSE HE COULD NOT HAVE SEX WITH ME AS OFTEN AS HE WANTED. We would have sex maybe 3 times a month because of my constant pain. This led him to stray from me. To add further insult – his affair was with the woman I babysat for. So on one occasion, I later found out, I was babysitting her children while she was out on a date with my husband. I suspected the affair for five months. It had actually been going on for almost a year. Fed up one night, I waited til he was asleep and checked his phone. He had been good at deleting text messages, but got lazy on that one occasion, and that’s how I was able to prove the affair.
In the aftermath of the affair, he filed for divorce while I was put on all kinds of psych meds. I finally plea bargained to be put on Gabapentin, once I realised it was also used as an antidepressant. My GYN had been trying for over a year to persuade me to take Gabapentin, so I caved in and did it so I could get out of the loony bin.
At first, I had good results from Gabapentin. My pain symptoms lessened, and for the first time in life, I wasn’t missing any work from the pain. I still had to take up to 1,200mg of Ibuprofen and sometimes Tyenol 3 on the job, but the pain was not affecting me the way it had prior to Gabapentin.
This lasted for about a year before I plateaued on the Gabapentin, and the pain seeped through. I was able to get my psychiatrist to transfer the Gabapentin prescription over to my gynecologist so that she could begin increasing dosage appropriate for treating the endo. It never worked out. I could never increase past 500mg without getting tremors in my head, neck, hands and legs. I tried to slowly increase on several occasions over another year to no avail, so finally I decided to call it quits and received permission to taper off completely from Gabapentin.
My Gabapentin story is not unique. “Although gabapentin is being increasingly prescribed to people with CPP, there is not enough evidence to say whether it is an effective treatment.”
The only thing left to manage the pain was Norco, and I did not like the side effects. I would get full-body itching, whereas on Tylenol 3, I didn’t itch as much. I always have nightmares whether on Norco or Tylenol 3 – it is a “feature” of the medication.
I fought for two years to be switched back to Tylenol 3, and finally won that battle.
But the pain remains a constant factor. Between 2012, when my world ended, and 2015, I was diagnosed with pelvic floor dysfunction, fibroids and a septated cyst on my ovary – on top of having endometriosis.
Also between 2012 and 2014, while taking Gabapentin, I developed hyperkinesia in the form of Restless Leg Syndrome.
Any doctor that ever tells you that side effects of a medication are reversible once you quit the medication IS FULL OF SHIT.
But you my darlings know that already.
My battle continues, and after nearly four years, I am ready to begin active blogging again on this site and on my public pain diary.
Thank you for your continued support over the years. I just wanted you to know why my blog has been collecting dust. It’s all too common for us to want to make a difference, to lend our voice, and yet be sidelined because of the pain. But I am still here. I’m not going away anytime soon. I am not suffering in silence, and neither should you.
