I Will Not Suffer In Silence

This week has marked a turn for the worse for my current employment.

I’ve been late every day this week due to traffic, for starters.
This in itself is not good, because the new policy that went into effect last month states that if one is tardy more than three times in a 90 day period, one may be fired.

YES, if one is TARDY.

As in WTF, IS THIS GRADE SCHOOL?

I’ve been a ball of anxiety, heartburn and stress as a result, and I’ve been near tears twice this week. I call my manager from the road to give her status and tell her I’m really trying. I get to work and take a screenshot of the traffic report (www.511.org) to prove my case. I have become seriously depressed this week.

Then, yesterday I got an email stating that I had an appointment with the new assistant to the CEO – he wanted to interview me for the new department they’re forming up – the one I aced the typing test for.
I went to the appointment but the door was closed. So I waited.
And waited.

And waited.

After about 15 minutes of this, I went back to my desk and started taking calls again. The director of Support came up to me to apologize and told me to go back to the dude’s office in 15 minutes. The director walked into my lovely fart cloud as I was on the phone with a customer to tell me this news. Way to go towards my department change…
So I walk back over to the head cheese’s office and on the way, I see the director. He tells me sorry, wait again, and we walked back to the other building again.

I never got another email or invite to be interviewed for the rest of yesterday or today. So I guess that’s off, now…

Today during the one-on-one meeting with my manager (which has been changing dates repeatedly over the past month, first it’s every Friday, then every Monday, now every Thursday), she informed me that the director of support is going to fire me next time I’m late and he doesn’t care about my excuses or screenshots of traffic reports to prove my case.

Today for example I was on time until I got to the flat stretch before the toll gates, then it came to a screeching halt because of a five car pileup at the toll gates. They CLOSED the whole road down. It took me an hour to get through the flats and cross the bridge to work, when usually, my entire trip only takes about an hour in the morning. And there’s no place to turn around on the flats. It’s a one-way highway straight to the toll gates, and one is walled in on all sides by three lanes of traffic. But the big bossman director dude doesn’t care.

Then my manager dropped a bomb. She is moving to another team, and told me that whomever they hire as the replacement manager is likely to get rid of me first thing based upon this week’s attendance. I was made at this point to sign a form stating I understood that my tardiness may be the firing of me next time it occurs.

And then, the kick in the stomach – the punch in the nose – we discussed which is more likely to get me fired – my health condition or the tardies. I pointed out that as of next month, I’ll reach the “three incidents of PTO in a 90 day period” rule. My boss waved her hand and said not to worry, by October I’ll be okay because I’ll have accrued a couple more PTO days.

I said yes but October makes it incident number four. My boss said basically that it DOESN’T – that the three incidents will be July-August-September. And then in October I’ll get the PTO days, so it goes August-September-October, and so on.

I don’t follow this, because doesn’t that mean by November then I’ll be let go? She says nawww, in October it will be September-October-November….she says I’ll never be at risk for being fired because I’ll always have some PTO ahead of me.

I think she’s off her nut.

Now, hear me out while I do the math so to speak. I know it’s a moot point but it’s the point of the matter and I tend to get a wild hair up my ass over such things…

In September, I use up the last PTO day and my Birthday day off work because george is slated to arrive for my birthday because he hates me so.

In October, I get four more PTO days. I will use up to two PTO days in October, and up to two PTO days in November. I do not get any further PTO days until January. This means I will be fired by December for exceeding the PTO allowance, because remember, not only is it “three incidents of PTO in a rolling 90 day period”, but it’s also “unless the PTO is exhausted, at which case you’re still fired.”

So.

If I am not fired for being tardy, I will certainly be fired before Christmas due to george.

Going back to the tardiness…my boss asked if I could start coming in a bit earlier to allow for a buffer. I told her that last week I left my home at 6:45am and got to work at 7:35am as a result. This week however, leaving work anywhere from 6:45am to 7am (my usual departure time) has NOT helped because this has been an exceptionally bad traffic week. She asked if I check traffic before leaving the house. I told her it hasn’t mattered if I do or not because I’m still stuck on that same stretch of road and accidents happen ON THE WAY TO WORK, so there’s no guaging that sort of thing!

I wanted to choke her at this point. But I realise she’s only asking these questions because she has to. She’s actually fought to keep me on this long.
So since she told me a secret (that she’s moving to a new department), I todl her a secret. I told her that due to the constant harrassment over my illness and now with the tardies, I’m a ball of anxiety and I’ll actually be very relieved when they let me go.

She gasped and asked if I’m looking for another job. I told her hell no – I need a friggin BREAK after this is over. I told her it’s a shame that management has to be so pigheaded. She frowned and nodded, and said she really thought she could change things, and that’s part of the reason why she’s moving to a new department, now.

My thought? Way to go on giving up on us, bosslady.

*sigh*

Only one more day to go, and then I have a three day weekend for Labor Day.

I can just picture them trying to tell me tomorrow that I HAVE to come in on Monday to work because they don’t have enough volunteers to staff the day.

If they do that, I’m walking off the job immediately. I’ve already briefed my man about this, so he’s prepared.

On a side note, you’ll be ecstatic to know that despite all of this job anxiety, I have NOT had a drop of alcohol in a week. As a matter of fact, if I have it correctly, it’s been TWO weeks since I’ve had any booze, unless I drank last Thursday, which is our usual “pissup nite”. I can’t recall that far back, however. My memory is always pretty bad (this is why I keep a journal dontchaknow).

However, I’ve noticed that I’ve started eating and drinking stuff with corn syrup in it again. So I have to stop that. And I’ve been trying to cut down on the muscle relaxers, too. Only had one this week. But tonight I’m sorry to say calls for another muscle relaxer. My back is really locked up.

My man rocks the house – it was too hot to cook food for dinner (we’ve had three days of heat wave this week), so he ordered Chinese delivery. Now I have leftovers – that means lunch is prepared for tomorrow. Yay!

I’ve also been catsitting all week for a friend – I think I mentioned this in an earlier post. This takes an hour away from my evenings, so that’s fueled my depression. The thing is, I like taking care of my friends’ pets. I enjoy going over there and I have made them my little purr puddles. It’s the fact that I’m always looking towards the rest of the evening and what still needs to be done for work the next morning. It’s this job. The job is in the way. I hate it. I hate that place. I can’t wait to be out.

And STILL, through ALL OF THIS, I’m STILL in the top ten job performers.

I kill me, I really do.

Woke up Friday morning and I was fine. Went outside and checked on my man’s car – it was fine, too.
Went to work – no pain or and very little bleeding. Was able to work the entire day on a bit of a happier note.

I was also called to take a typing test on Friday, which tells me A) they received my resume for the new in-house position and B) they want me to be a part of that team.

I aced the typing test as I expected I would. I can type 85wpm. :)

I spent Friday evening cleaning house a bit and hanging out with my man. FINALLY, some relaxation and cuddle time!

Spent Saturday again with my man, out and about, shopping and such. At one point he turned to me and said he really enjoys going shopping with me. He also said that before dating me, he NEVER went to froofy bath stores to get fancy soaps! I told him neither did I before we hooked up!!! It’s a new development over the time we’ve been together, and I blame a few of my girlfriends, as well as my sister. ;)
I started off shopping in such stores for gifts for them, and ended up liking the soaps and bath salts, myself! Who knew I’d ever be this girly.

After we shopped, we went to a friend’s house to hang for a bit – we haven’t seen them in months now, so it was good to catch up again.

Capped off the night with sushi with yet another friend, then came home, watched a documentary about The Cure, and went to bed.

This morning, I’m up bright and early to pick up keys to another friend’s house to watch their cats while they’re at BurningMan, and then I’m off to pick up sherpa at the train station so we can go bicycling – my first bicycle ride in many months.

Hm, BurningMan. I’ve never been to it. I’ve been hearing about it since 1996, when my friend Evil showed a bunch of us some alternative magazine article on the event when we all still lived in Michigan. I declared it a buncha steenking hippies and said I’d never go.

When I moved to California in 1997, I found out over the next several years that A LOT of the goths out here go to and love BurningMan.

WEIRD.

I still declare it a bunch of steenking hippies, but I do admit a moderate amount of curiosity because so many of my California friends and aquaintances love the event.

Eh, maybe one day I’ll check it out. It’s not anywhere near the same BurningMan that it was 10 years ago. But if a friend invites me to go a few years from now, I might.

“A few years”?

Yeah… cuz next year and the year after will be kinda busy for me….what with a wedding and honeymoon and all. :)

At work today my boss pulled me aside and:

1. wanted to know what my surgeon had said on Friday, and wanted to let me know that she’ll need me to let the CEO’s new right-hand-man know about my health condition in a bid to try to work something out to keep me
2. wanted to let me know that she was disappointed to not see my resume for an internal job that’s opening up – for the email-support-only team. The internal job offering closed yesterday.

I told her:

1. There’s nothing more my surgeon can do since hormones didn’t work, and sure, no problem, I’ll tell Mr. Guy all about my condition, no problem.
2. Sorry, but I’ve been BEDRIDDEN ALL WEEK. Submitting a resume was the last thing on my mind.

Hell, I don’t even want to be at that company anymore. I purposefully didn’t submit my damned resume. As it was, my boss told me she’ll “break convention” and take my resume, even though HR closed the offering internally. Rather than admit to her that I don’t want to stick around, I handed my resume to her.

I started off the day without george, but after lunch he returned. I had cramps and hot flashes and wondered if I should go home. But I stuck it out because if I would have taken yet another day, it’d be one more nail in the coffin of my employment there, sooner than expected. Why not take it? I dunno. Stubborn, I guess. Or stupid retarded.

I got home and there was a message on the machine – it was the doctor’s office saying they WON’T write me a note excusing me for three days of work this week – that now I have to come in for an appointment before they’ll give me any note at all.

Fecking lovely. Well there’s the final nail in the coffin. If I can’t get an appointment for this Saturday, then I don’t have a note, and if I don’t have a note, then each day off work counts as one incident each and I’m as good as fired. I’ve got one incident on record from last month already. I have a total of three. After three they can fire me.

Tonight my man took me out to a low-key dinner. I drove so he could have a drink, because his job is now talking job cuts.

I can’t handle all this stress. My forehead is broken out again fresh this week with over a dozen zits, and my left thumb looks like leprosy again – eczema from stress or diet or both. I told my man I not only want to quit my job, I don’t want to take another job. And he can’t afford to take care of me. I asked him, if he got laid-off work today, could he make rent and bills next month?

No, he can’t.

And he thinks he can support me if I lose my job?!?!?

This is the American Way, folks. People constantly counting on that next paycheck, never saving any money for emergencies – using all their income on toys and food and other frivolties.

I went to work this morning with a bad gut feeling. There was very little pain again, so I went with it. There was also very little bleeding this morning. The 37-mile drive to work was uncomfortable again – I still have the water-balloon sloshy feeling inside.

I was able to work from 8am – 12pm this time before calling it quits due to the return of heavy bleeding, clots, extreme fatigue, dizziness and severe cramping.

Again I had to clean up my blood from the FLOOR every time I used the bathroom. All I’d do was take down my pants to sit on the pot, or rise from the pot after, and spillage was inevitable. Again I felt nauseous from all the bleeding.

On the way out of work, my boss told me to get that doctor’s note for the HR department. I felt like telling her to piss off, but I know she’s only the messenger. It’s that other manager who started shit yesterday that I want to tell off.

When I got into my car, I sneezed, and filled a pad just like that. I began to cry as a result. How the hell was I going to make it home? But what choice did I have? I certainly didn’t want to stay at work where everyone would be staring at me. Management doesn’t care about me – I feel like they think I’m a big drama queen, causing a scene.

I wept in my car for a few minutes, pulled myself together, and drove home. I felt every bump in the road and today it wasn’t sloshy balloon feeling – it was sharp pains that made me gasp. And I had the return of the anal pain, too. I cried out in pain several times on the way home. I got home and went directly to bed.

Did I mention that I threw out my shoulder again last night while turning over in my sleep?

Yeah, so my right shoulder is hosed. I did this several months ago too, also when stressed out from missing work due to the endo. So now I’m on muscle relaxers on top of the ibuprofen and tylenol 3.

I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow, even though I know that this will all be over by tomorrow. I missed a full day of work due to pain on Monday, a half day yesterday and a half day today. Tomorrow is the fourth day, which most of the time means I’ll be better.

But I’ve just had it with the workplace. I’m so depressed over this. I want to be taken care of right now but there’s no one with money to take me on as a dependent. I just feel like giving up, anyway, and not caring that the bills and rent would pile up immediately.

I went to work this morning, unsure of why I pushed myself out of bed. There was very little pain, so I went with it. The entire 37-mile drive to work was uncomfortable however – I still have the water-balloon sloshy feeling inside.

I was able to work from 8am – 1pm before calling it quits due to heavy bleeding, clots, extreme fatigue, dizziness and intermittent cramping. I mean, if I’m going to have to clean up my blood from the FLOOR every time I try to use the bathroom, that’s a health hazard to others and I shouldn’t be at work. All I’d do was take down my pants to sit on the pot, or rise from the pot after, and spillage was inevitable. The dizziness of course was from the heavy bleeding.

I got home and on a whim checked my work email. There was an email from my boss showing a thread that occurred after I left. The “officer of the day” – a manager who is appointed to monitor who is logged into the phone queues, and who also logs remotely into peoples’ machines to look at what they’re working on to make sure no one is slacking off – he got my chat message that I needed to go home sick, and immediately wrote to the HR department about it….like a kid tattling or something. I’d notified him AND my boss AND all the other managers on the floor – why did he have to report it to HR?

Because they’re still trying to fire me for having a health condition.

So my boss wrote back to him and to the HR department, stating that she’ll have me get a doctor’s note so being off work yesterday and part of today counts as “one incident”.

This pissed me off to no end. I was shaking with anger. I phoned up my doctor’s office and explained the situation – they were kind and wrote me a doctor’s note. I’m to pick it up this weekend because I’m at work through the week before the doctor’s office opens, and I don’t get home til after they’ve closed.

My boss also noted that this is now my “second incident”. I was absent two days last month for the Endo, too. Last month was the start of the new Paid Time Off policy, so I got a semi-clean slate. Up til that point, I had one more day I could take off work before being fired – regardless of having a documented health condition.

Next month will be my “third incident” and one can have no more than four total incidents of missed work within a 90-day period without being fired, regardless of the reason. The workplace can also opt to fire me after the third incident, expecting there will be a fourth.

Additionally, if I run out of Paid Time Off days before I run out of “incidents”, I can STILL be fired, because under no circumstances do they allow people to take UNpaid time off work.

Everyone I’ve spoken to says this is illegal. So if they do fire me for this, I’m reporting them to the labor board.

When I got home, I ate some lunch and took a nap because I was still so wiped out. At one point I turned over and fell asleep face down on the bed. Not a good plan. I couldn’t breathe very well and the bed is dusty – we have yet to get a dust mite cover for the bed.

So I had a nightmare.

I was at my dad’s old house back in Michigan. A red pickup truck and another car were parked in his circle driveway, but the owners of the car belonged to the residence next door, which was converted into a multi-dwelling home so the neighbor could make money renting to several people.

It was dark and I went out the front door and took a left, walked down the porch and around the side of the house which borders on a wetlands valley. As I walked through the path leading to the backyard, my left hand touched something soft in the bushes – it felt like a female child’s long silky hair on a soft head…but what was a child doing in the bushes? I kept walking, pretending not to be alarmed. When I got into the backyard, I ascended the stairs to the deck attached to the back of the house. As I was looking around in the silvery-lit darkness (there must have been a moon present to make the night look silvery), I saw it….

An old friend of mine appeared – she used to have long silky blonde hair in high school. Her head was down but her eyes glared up at me as she walked slowly towards me. Before my eyes, she turned into a blonde wolf and ran at me. We wrestled and fought. She bit deep into me and clawed deep gashes into me. There was blood everywhere. I tried to hurt her back to no avail – she was much stronger than me. I kicked and fought and did enough damage eventually to get the wolf to break free of me. I scrambled into the back door of the house and stared at her through the screen door as she perched under part of the deck, growling at me. Then her eyes softened -she looked hurt and afraid. I glared and said NO.

I knew she was waiting for me to die. I knew that I would die.

I woke heart pounding and gasping for air to the sound of the phone ringing.

I staggered to the phone – it was the doctor’s office leaving a message saying my note was ready. I then staggered to the bathroom, where I bled profusely and shed several large clots. I had to clean up my legs afterwards, it was so bad.

The nausea set in at the sight of all the blood and clots. I always thought I could handle gore but I guess I can’t. This isn’t the first time I’ve made myself nauseated from all the blood – or…hmm perhaps it’s the blood loss itself that makes me nauseous, not the sight of it…because I can watch viles of blood be drawn from my arm for tests no problem. And I can watch a bag of blood fill up when I donate – I like to poke at the warm bag after I’m done filling it.

Anyway…

I got back into bed and that’s when the pain set in. So now I’m on Tylenol 3 again and using the laptop as a heating pad in bed. I’m waiting for my man to come home from work to make me some dinner.

I hate being an invalid. I hate my job for harrassing me. I’ve been looking for a new job. This is the first job in all my 20 years of working that has ever mistreated me for having Endometriosis. They will not get away without, at the very least, a slap.

I’m a 35 year old caucasian female, born to an Appalachian woman and a Polish/Scots/Canadian man.

I was raised in and around Detroit, Michigan within sight/walking distance of factories, auto plants and chemical processing plants.

I grew up in a family where most, if not all of the adults smoked heavily. My mother was a pack-a-day user inside the house. My father was probably half that but tried to keep it outside of his house (my parents divorced when I was four).

I grew up in poverty, so we ate a lot of cheap red meat, government cheese, and refined sugars and breads.

I got my period for the first time when I was fourteen. My ma never prepared me for what to expect, but thankfully my friends and my schooling did, otherwise it might have been a scene right out of Stephen King’s ‘Carrie’. It was bad enough that my ma is Christian Fundamentalist and that the kids in school made fun of me and called me ‘Carrie’ anyway because of my long straight red hair.

The pain associated with my period began within the first year. I used to vomit from the pain and had to miss school because of it.

I asked my ma if she ever had that kind of pain. She said no, but her three sisters and her ma did. My ma told me she used to make fun of her sisters because she didn’t understand what they went through and thought they were faking it. …She never knew that there could be a real problem occurring until I started having the same symptoms.

I began drinking alcohol when I was sixteen. My ma kept Johnny Walker Red in her dresser drawer and I’d swipe a sip every now and then. My friend introduced me to cheap vodka and orange juice and we drank screwdrivers whenever we could get ahold of some.

When I turned nineteen, my friends and I began to go to Canada to get drunk every weekend. I developed a fondness for rum and coke. Rum is made from sugar. Coke is made from corn syrup. Sticky sweet toxicity.

When I was twenty-five in 1996, I saw a gynecologist about the severe monthly pain. He told me I hit every symptom in the book for Endometriosis, and told me I should have a laparoscopy to get an official diagnosis. At the time, I was too afraid of surgery, so I put it off for awhile. When I did decide I was ready, I was told I could get the procedure done in Spring of 1997.

That’s when my boyfriend at the time got hired to work in California, and asked me to go with him. I’d have six weeks downtime I was told post-op. That ran into the packing and moving, so I again rescheduled.

Due to having shitty jobs that provided shitty HMO health coverage in California, it took ten more years before I’d finally get the surgery to diagnose me.

In that time, I’ve been a social alcoholic since about my late sophomore year in college, ironically after I was accused of being alcoholic by the doctor who treated me for pancreatitis in 1993. Self-fulfilling prophecy and all that. I still love rum best and drink it straight or mixed in fresh fruity stuff a la tiki bar.

I became “ovo-lacto-pesco vegetarian” in 1999 but continued to eat sweets. The pain never stopped. I found out I have gluten intolerance in 2006 so I went back to eating meat to give myself more food options.

In 2002, I interviewed my maternal grandmother and two of my aunts about their painful periods. I was given very similar stories to what I go through. Grandma used to be bedridden for a week at a time!! My grandma had nine kids and the pain never let up. She unfortunately couldn’t recall what menopause was like. My aunts had anywhere from two to four kids and their pain never went away, either. They had trouble with menopause but told me they thought it was normal, so I don’t know for sure. They’re Appalachian – they don’t like to give too much personal detail about stuff like that.

This is my background environment – all of the above contributes to my illness. Even though it’s largely hereditary in my case, other factors exacerbated over time and continue to do so.

Where do I go from here? Will I ever see relief?

I fluctuate between accepting my fate, being bitter at my ma for not knowing better and continuing the genetic line, and being diligent at trying to find a workaround to the pain.

I had an offer to go up to Lake Tahoe last weekend with a friend and some of her other friends. I turned her down because I feared george would show up and I’d be bedridden in a sleeping bag on a hard floor with all these people I’ve never met before. How embarrassing that would have been.

Turns out, george was a day late. Instead of arriving Sunday, he arrived on Monday. Now, I did have symptoms and aggravating back and neck pain all weekend preceding george, and I required a massage by Sunday night (hooray for my man!) to help loosen the back. George showed up seven hours later.

It’s just another instance of george denying me any fun.

Today I probably could have gotten through half the workday, but I didn’t feel like chancing it. The guilt always sets in when I do that, even though it turns out for the best. I’m about to be on round two of pain meds (which is good, considering I tend to do three to four rounds on a bad day), but I’ve been staving it off to see how much more of this I can take. I’ve come to fear and loathe pain pills. They too have messed up my body.

I had an entire day to work with, but all I could do was sleep for most of it. I bitch about this often – there’s nothing I can do about the fact that I will have downtime, but it never stops me from hating it.

Blah. Just took more meds.

I called in sick before the pain really sets in.

George showed up this morning. I woke around 5am with some pain and bleeding.

I’ve been VERY tired and have gone around the entire morning (5:30 – 7:30) with my eyes half closed, staggering about the house trying to wake up. Usually I’m not this tired – I know it’s just george.

I did my usual routine – made my breakfast and lunch for the day, did my hair, got dressed. But I just kept falling back to sleep. Sleep walking, I swear.
But through all this, the pain didn’t really set in. I kept thinking, “Wait For It….” but the pain never ramped up. This is good!!!

However, I was eating my breakfast when the clock turned 7am. I’m supposed to leave BY 7am at the latest. Otherwise, I’m late to work. I already have two strikes against me for tardiness. Strike three puts me in the red and they make a decision on whether or not to fire me.

Then again, this week is chopping block week, anywa….OH! I didn’t tell you!!!

On Friday during the one-on-one meeting with my boss, she let slip that re-organisation is in the air. She tried to be vague but I said, “come on, I sit right outside the Director’s office, and he and the other head cheeses have been having pow-wows in there all week. I already know a re-org is coming.” My boss sighed, then perked up and said, “did you hear anything?”
I laughed and said no. She slumped and said “darn”.
Too funny!

She *thinks* our team won’t be affected and she is *pretty sure* I won’t personally be affected by the coming changes. Then she went over my weekly stats – I was number six out of twenty-five reps last week – in the top ten, taking most of the calls and answering more emails than many others…again.

BWAHAHAHAHA! I’M NUMBER SIX!!! BE SEEING YOU!

*ahem*

Couldn’t resist.

I’m feeling somewhat guilty for calling in when I’m not in dying pain, but at the same time, I have a gut feeling that the worst is to arrive just around the next couple of hours, and I do NOT want to be at work when this happens.

Plus, I just don’t want to be at work. :p

8:44am Edit: Well here we are. The pain has set in, as well as the freezing chills to add to the misery. Time for heating pad and drugs.

On Friday I had my six month checkup with my surgeon. She said she didn’t feel anything unusual in there, and she did a pap. I’ll find out the results in a couple of weeks.
She said she’s upset that a) the surgery didn’t provide relief and b) I won’t consider different hormonal treatments.
Further, she mused that she should have done a hysterectomy when she had the chance. I told her that if she took everything, I’d have to go on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and I’ve already told her several times, no more hormones. She then said she could have taken the uterus, leaving the ovaries intact.
To which I replied that with the ovaries still intact, the Endo still has the chance to thrive, and as she can attest, I do have a stubborn case of Endo, so in my case, I’d call it LIKELY that the Endo would continue to thrive.
She winced and shrugged, and was forced to concede that I had a very good point.

Come on, I’ve been researching this shit for years. I told her I didn’t want her to feel like she’d failed me, because she has been the best person for me in all these years – she gave me an official diagnosis. I told her too that I actually DID experience some relief from the pain, in the sense that symptoms for months after surgery did not present as early as they had before.

It’s only this month, six months after surgery, that I’ve begun to have a hard time two weeks before my period again.

I’m sad about this, and my surgeon is also sad and frustrated, but honestly, there’s nothing else we can do because of my reluctance to try another hormone therapy. I’ve still yet to try acupuncture, and I’ve still yet to listen to the health counselor I’ve hired. So there’s changes on my end that I know I need to make, that I’m not living up to.

I’ve been keeping post-it notes of my symptoms and forgetting to type them up here. So here they are all at once:

August 6 – 8, 2007: light pelvic pain
August 8, 2007: dull upper thigh pain
August 15, 2007: intermittent prickly sharp cramps in the front of my pelvic region/uterine area. Painful ankles and calves due to bloat.
August 16, 2007: pain in thighs/knees/ankles due to bloat. Onset moderate low back pain, requiring Ibuprofen.
August 17, 2007: constant checking – feels like george could be here at any second. Very tired. Intermittent moderate low back pain.
August 19, 2007: severe nesting and restlessness – george is about to arrive – I vacuumed and swept and did dishes and laundry. Later in the day, my back from neck to waist locked up, bracing for the coming george pain. I took a muscle relaxer. Constant checking – why isn’t george here, yet? Mild to moderate intermittent pelvic cramping.

As I type, the back pain is getting worse, especially in the shoulders as they try to compensate for the internal swelling and inflammation that is slowing setting in at the lower part of my back and pelvic region.

My masseuse told me that for years even after she got a hysterectomy, her body went into this cycle every month like clockwork. She had to reprogram her body to make the muscles aware that they no longer needed to go into protective mode anymore!

Going back to my health counselor – she’s been trying, really she has. I saw her two weeks ago and she made me a batch of lentil soup. It was really good and lasted for three servings. Alas, I have not lived up to my end of the bargain – I continue to drink until drunk with my friends. I continue to not get enough exercise. I continue to eat junk food.

Having Endometriosis means I am at a slightly elevated risk for cancer of the ovaries, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and endocrine and brain cancers, according to Dr Anna-Sofia Berglund.
I’m already in a higher risk pool for endocrine cancer because I had acute pancreatitis with gallstones in 1993 after having been on antibiotics nearly every month for a year. I was always sick with sinus infections because I was working with children and my immune system is not stellar.

Drinking alcohol severely increases the risk of another attack of pancreatitis, and if I go chronic, I am also highly likely to develop pancreatic cancer, according to what I’ve read out on the Internet.

So..double whammy. I NEED to get my shit together and STOP drinking alcohol. Further, I NEED to ask my health counselor this week if she can help me do a gallstone flush – perhaps that will help lessen the pain of Endometriosis?

It’s only Wednesday.

My friend E is in town from Australia and I only got to see her after work for a couple short hours each time on Monday and Tuesday. I’m happy for the time we did get to hang out – on Monday we went to a Mexican restaurant and then came back to my house and chatted for a bit. And last night we went out to the famous Tiki bar and enjoyed a couple of drinks each while chatting away. My man got to join us last night, too.

The rest of the week has dragged on and on and on in such misery regarding my commute to work, the damned workday itself, and the commute home again. And, as I said, it’s only Wednesday. Worse than that though, is it’s only the very early hours of Wednesday. I’ve been this close to crying over all kinds of petty things for two days, now.

Add to that the fact that I’ve been having george symptoms like the bad old days and was even cramping mildly last night from the time I got on the road to drive home until going to bed.

My entire pelvic region feels like a sloshing water balloon, and every time I am driving in my car, every little bump in the road makes me guard my sloshy innards and feel a tinge of discomforting pain.

And to finish off the post with much TMI, I now have a VERY ripped up asshole from all the stress and worry I’ve been doing over the last few days with regards to job, not enough time in the day, commute, trying to think of my next steps in career path, and friends and family.