I Will Not Suffer In Silence

Spent all day yesterday sneezing and having intermittent faucet dripping nose action. Had some mild coughing fits but nothing too bad. The worst part was the foggy brain and being SO tired. And then the sinus headache started in around dinner time.

My man decided last night that since both of us are now sick, that he’d buy us dinner instead of having to make dinner. We got something quick and cheap and brought home Boston Market food. Of course, as I sat there chowing down, the food tasted a bit sweet to me. I said “great, I think there’s corn syrup in this”.
And I was right. I thought the corn syrup was in the creamed spinach but no, it was actually in the fecking squash casserole! And there’s wheat in the squash casserole, too! Not enough for me to get sick on it seems, but obviously I want to avoid it in the future.

Throughout the day and even after dinner, I found my stubborn streak and held onto it tightly, and got over a full day’s work done for my business. Even went out and bought printer paper, and though it’s a shade off, it still does the trick for printed reports. I’ll get OCD later and try again to match the colour from the site to printed paper.

Today I started off the day with a really bad nightmare, and it took me about an hour to settle down (I think chamomile tea and a nice email from my friend wanting to buy my product helped, too).

I’ve been VERY tired again today, and my eyes feel itchy and swollen, AND I’m still feeling like george is gonna be here any second, too. I wish he’d make up his fecking mind and be early already, instead of dragging on the pain for days before the Real Pain.

I keep trying to get work done, but I can’t focus for shit. And now the coughing has started again. GAH.

I hate today and it’s not even noon, yet.

Well It Has Begun for me, I think.

Woke up last night unable to breathe out of my left nostril, and my throat was very sore. I chugged water and stayed up til my nose cleared. On top of that, I’d begun again having mild george pain, so that do0m is on its way Real Soon Now.

IF I GET A FULL BLOWN SINUS INFECTION AND GIRL DO0M AT THE SAME TIME, MY MAN IS IN TROUBLE.

AND DON’T FORGET I’M SLATED TO DELIVER FOOD TO A WEDDING ON FRIDAY AND ATTEND SAID WEDDING ON SATURDAY.

…Just tried to pinpoint how and when he got sick. If it took 3.5 days for me to get what he’s got, and he got sick on Saturday, then the likely culprit was his last day at the workplace on the Wednesday before Turkey Day. He says people have definitely been in and out of work sick for the past couple of weeks. Bastards.

I’d been using Clorox wipes, washing my hands frequently, and unfortunately for my man, not getting too close to him very often during this whole sickie mess.

But all to no avail. Currently I have a sinus headache, and have been sneezing all morning, and have been spitting up crud. Clearly I should have just moved out on Saturday night until this sickness had passed, and left B to fester on his own in quarantine. But no. I didn’t do that. To quote my man, “I am a kind and loving god” and stuck around and made him dinners and cleaned the house and bought him snackies and kleenex.

Well… now it’s his turn.

Let the good times roll.

Two nights ago, in the dead of the night, I awoke with a twinge of uterine pain. It was the first indication that george is on the way, and I felt apprehensive, like when someone you don’t like keeps coming around and you can’t figure out how to make them go away. I’d just had a very good bike ride hours earlier, and had been quite the busy bee cleaning house.
I thought, “Well there you have it – that was my nesting phase kicking in before the pain, trying to prepare the house for the arrival of george”.

Yesterday throughout the day I had annoying twinges of pain but kept on cleaning and also working on my business.
Today I was downright TIRED all day. Bushed. Beat. Rundown. I had to force myself to go on my bike ride, and I could only do six miles (four miles short of tying my ride on Sunday) before calling it quits. Granted, it was pretty windy today, too, but still. I felt disappointed in the fact that I’m so out of energy.

The other issue going on is that my man has been sick with a sinus infection since Saturday night, and today I woke up with a scratchy throat that’s not left me all day. While on my bike ride, my ears started feeling plugged up, and that hasn’t left me for the rest of the day, either.

By 8:30pm, I was falling asleep at the keyboard, though I still needed to get more work done. By 10:30pm I called it quits. I only got like five hours of work done today for the business. :(

Tomorrow is another day, a fresh start, I can only pick up where I left off and keep running with the torch until it dies out for another Downtime. But it still makes me sad and rushed, like I only have so much lifeforce left before this Saturday, when george is slated to arrive and start kicking me in the pelvis, shoving white hot knives through my uterus and lower back, dragging cleated shoes down my thighs, and shoving hot pokers up my ass.

Yeah, that’s what it feels like every month. You’d be apprehensive, too. Well, you’d be A LOT more than apprehensive, but then I’ve had this bastard in my body for 21 years, so I’ve had to learn to just TAKE his abuse. I used to vomit from the pain in the early days. I’ve grown somewhat tolerant of the pain over the years that I don’t puke anymore.

That doesn’t really help make things better, does it.

The other thing that sucks hard is that this Saturday is my friend’s wedding! And here I’m slated to be bedridden in horrible pain! I hope with ferocity that george is late. Personal note to george: Even a day late buddy, can ya do that for me, huh? You know, nobody invited you, you piece of shit.

I’m slated to bicycle again on Thursday, but as of this evening, my lower back is really bothering me. This is another sign that george is near. So I may be out of commission by Thursday. Not bedridden, but just not feeling well by then.

Today I laid out the days in which I can bicycle over the next month for a group of friends that have expressed interest in bicycling with me. When I sat back and actually looked at the calendar in depth, I realised that I only have anywhere from six to nine good days each month to bicycle, when spacing it out every other day. This both excited me and depressed me at the same time. I’m excited because it is yet one more tangible thing to view and strive for in my Uptime. I’m Depressed because that’s all I get, and healthy people get so much more time than I have to work with.

This is because I am so tired and have aches and pains within five days of george, that even doing housework such as dishes is enough to cause pain and/or wear me out. And then george arrives and from day one through day four of george, I’m pretty much bedridden. Actually, it’s more like Day 1 – Day 3 I’m bedridden. Day 4 I suddenly feel better and the bleeding subsides, so I do something like get out of bed and try to go to work, or walk to the corner and back, or get a load of laundry done, and then george comes back and kills me for another day and a half. Then he leaves again for another 27 days.
The week after george is all about getting back into my routine, withdrawing from the painkillers, getting my strength back.

So in visual format, using an example calendar below, let’s mark george in red, and mark the downtime on either side of george in purple:

 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7
 8  9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31

That leaves me with roughly 15 days out of a month where I’m functioning well – my Uptime. I only ever have half a month, while healthy people get an entire month every month, except for on occasion when they get a cold or flu.

This is not all laid out here for you to feel sorry for me. It’s to put life in perspective, for myself as well as for yourself. Enjoy the time you have.

Tomorrow is another day before my impending Downtime. There is much work to be done this week with the fading strength I have. My stubborn nature serves me well during this time. I can do this.

And for my Downtime, I have the laptop my man bought, and books I am borrowing from the library to read up on dietary stuff to help manage the pain, and drugs. I have lots of drugs for the coming pain.

This week was supposed to be my man’s vacation week, from last Thursday to this Wednesday.
However, Thursday he got thee worst allergy attack EVAR, which subsided a bit for Turkey Day dinner, then came back with a vengeance when we went out to the club.

Friday we spent with his Dad, and the allergies seemed to taper off.

Then Saturday night, BAM, all hell broke loose and he could barely breathe, sneezing like mad, constant faucet with the nose, ew.
At that point he told me it wasn’t allergies anymore – he was fully sick. He’s gone through half a forest already in tissues since then. My poor man!

Seems like a bunch of my friends are suffering from the same SnotFest.

And then today, my throat felt scratchy and as I rode my bike, my ears felt like they were plugging up.

PLEASE, DO NOT WANT.

I’m already slated to be bedridden by this weekend from george.

AND I’m slated to deliver food for a wedding on Friday and attend said wedding on Saturday. How I’m going to pull off weddingness and manage my disease is beyond me. Not Thinking About That Right Now.

No SnotFest for me. No No No. DO NOT WANT. Now I’m off to ingest more Vitamin C and eat another apple.

On Sunday, November 11, I made sure to walk around town to try to ease the nerve pain, because info that I read online said further bedrest is actually bad for sciatica. I’m pretty sure that’s what is going on, pain-wise.
For the record, walking did NOT immediately help but I think it did over the long run help me with the nerve pain. I did end up drugging myself silly Sunday evening, though.

To recap: george left on Saturday, but as stated in my last entry, one pain replaced another as it appears I had a bout with sciatica.

I got through the rest of the catsitting for my friend, and she came home last night a happy camper as to the service/work I provided her. Yay!

Yesterday was my fourth visit to the acupuncturist, so I’ve finally met the deductable. I saw him for the nerve pain, this time. He said L5 was the culprit, and he did the needles with electrodes, applied cupping and massage, and slapped a steenky menthol/herb patch to my lower back. I really did feel better for a few hours, but the pain returned again by 8pm and I took a Darvocet to help me rest through the night.

This morning I got up when my man got up for work, because I had a job interview – it’s been in the works for months through a friend’s company – they’ve just been having a hard time with one of their employees actually leaving so that they can hire someone else.
I was feeling much better by today, THANKFULLY, and got to the interview without getting lost. I got an ok vibe from the place, the owners seem nice enough. The company does skills testing software for agencies and HR departments. They’re in need of an office manager/techie. They know I’ve never done management before but somehow have faith in me. ;)
One of the owners asked me about my last job, and why I’m no longer there, so I was completely honest about it. He said, “Uhhh, that doesn’t sound legal…”
I replied, “Actually, it’s not! I’m talking to the labor board now…”
He said good! And he even knows what Endometriosis is. Crazy! So we’ll see how this pans out.

Regarding my overall health – now that the sciatic nerve issue is calming down, I’m going to go on a bike ride today and see how my body reacts to that. I’ll take it slow, no hills or anything like that. ;)
And with regards to george, my next steps are as follows:

• No more sugar
• No more alcohol (let’s see how long this lasts, since I’ve failed at every single attempt so far)
• Keep taking the Chinese herbs (as discussed back on November 5th)
• Read more about the pH Balancing that someone on the DailyStrength Endo forum told me about
• Check the West End library for the Budwig Diet books that my friend’s brother told me about, and purchase books from Amazon if the libraries in town don’t have them (the Main Library certainly doesn’t! I checked on Sunday)
• Keep doing acupuncture
• Borrow pilates for beginners yoga videos from the library or from friends
• Keep assembling my personal recipe book based upon all my dietary restrictions (gluten-free, yeast-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, protein-rich)

Whew! Sounds like a lot of work! But really, not so much. I gotta work when I have uptime, to prepare for the next downtime. There’s always downtime like clockwork, once a month. The Endometriosis is not going away. I acknowledge this. All I can do is work with the time I have to try to be strategic in battling the pain so it stops claiming so much of my life. Maybe it’s futile. Maybe nothing will work. But I have to at least try. I will not be an invalid.

Off I go now, watch me! Zo0m!

When I got out of bed this morning, two things were apparent:

1) george was gone, yay!

2) my right side to my tailbone had sharp pain, like a pulled muscle. :(

When I moved about, doing my morning stuff, the pain would be sharp at times, radiating from the tailbone to the right side, sometimes down my right buttock, sometimes down the front of me – down the pelvic bone to my thigh. I was sure I’d pulled a muscle in my sleep, or perhaps from being bedridden for most of the week.

I stretched slowly throughout the day, took it easy, took my time doing chores and such. But the pain didn’t go away.

By midday, I started wondering if maybe I’d taken too many pain pills over the past week and blew out my kidneys, as the pain seemed to radiate to both sides of my trunk. I chugged water all day and peed a lot, which is good news.

By late afternoon, the pain started to spread. It wasn’t getting any better – it was worsening. This scared me. I had not taken any pain medication all day because of the fear that I’d taken too much pain medication over the past week. But now the pain was getting pretty bad and so I waffled for an hour on even taking a 600mg Ibuprofen.
Finally I could stand it no more, but before taking any meds, I called up a friend who has endured debilitating back pain for years, and described my symptoms to her. She said it sounded like sciatic nerve pain.

Nerves, huh, not strained muscle or damaged kidneys? Hmmm. After talking with her a bit, I took the ibuprofen and chugged more water, and followed her advice of laying flat on my back on the floor with my knees drawn up, feet flat on the floor. This helped the pain to go away completely. I laid there for awhile, then got up slowly and went back to my computer to finish the work I was doing. Then my man came in the door with dinner. We sat down on the couch and GAH! The pain returned. Sharp, jolting death mostly on the right side, radiating down my leg.

My man fetched a pillow chair he’d bought me for george, and set it on the couch behind me, which pushed me up further on the couch and forced me to sit up straight. This helped immensely, and so we ate dinner and watched a movie.

About halfway through the movie, I shifted in my seat and cried out in the pain that followed. Now both sides were inflamed, with pain radiating out from the lower center of my back, above the tailbone. The pain was stinging, like pins and needles, like when one’s foot loses circulation, but worse. It was hot and stinging and sharp and took away my breath. The pain radiated down my buttocks and around the front of my legs to my knees. WTF.
This scared the shit out of me, as I’m used to either my chronic UPPER back pain or george pain. I had no idea what this was, so I began crying and asked to be taken to the emergency room.

My man didn’t know what to do but looked genuinely concerned, but didn’t want to take me to E.R. or else he was just paralysed with panic, I dunno. So after standing there and crying next to the couch, I slowly made my way to the bedroom and laid down on the floor on my back, knees drawn up like my friend told me to do by phone earlier.

This time the pain didn’t go away. I asked my man to please research WTF sciatic nerve pain is and how it affects one.

He read from wikipedia first, then from mayo clinic, and began laughing incredulously, because everything I described to him earlier was exactly what the mayo clinic was listing as symptoms of sciatica. He told me it looks like I’m a textbook case. Both of us relaxed, because now we knew what was going on, and we didn’t have to go to E.R., and as a matter of fact, the mayo clinic website advises against going to E.R., saying home remedies are best.

Unfortunately, it can take WEEKS to recover from a bout of sciatica. I do NOT need this right now. But I realise I brought it upon myself. Looking back to the past week, I was bedridden. I didn’t want to get up and about on Tuesday and Wednesday and stayed bedridden for much of those two days. I did get up and about at length on Thursday but was bedridden again for much of the day on Friday. During the times I was in bed, I would be on the laptop in reclined position, and my butt would ache until I shifted position or got out of bed for a few minutes. My butt even went numb at one point. THAT is what did me in. I had pressed on the nerves for too long and caused a bout of sciatica.

For the next month leading up to george again, I must focus on recovering from this nerve pain, and then focus on strengthening my back, taking my vitamins, taking the Chinese herbal medication, exercising, omitting sugar and alcohol from my diet again, and generally being well and sound of mind so that next month’s downtime won’t be so treacherous.

I can do this. I have to do this. I have to be well enough to fight again next month.

Woke up today before my man left for work, and got the day started. I needed to go take care of my friend’s cats, then come home, take a shower, and get to the unemployment office for their mandatory debasing “let’s show you how to look for a job” meeting.

I went outside, got into my car, turned the key in the ignition, and …. nothing.

Panic set in. I waited a few seconds, then tried it again. Nothing. No click, no turning over of the engine, nothing.

My man had already left for work, too.

I called my auto insurance roadside assistance number and explained to them the situation. They radioed a tow truck to give me a jump and if necessary a tow to my mechanic.

Flashing back:
The week I was fired, I’d told my boyfriend that I had a gut feeling that my car was going to break down. I told him my feeling was that it would happen in the next two weeks, which would place the timing between October 10 – October 24. Thankfully no breakdown occurred, but the front left tire has a steady leak that I have to keep filling until I can get off my ass and take the car in to the tire shop. I’ve had other things on my mind so the tire has not taken priority. My man has told me I should get the car into the shop for a tuneup so it doesn’t break down and fulfill my prophecy, but I said “with what money? I have to wait til my first unemployment check unless you want to do it”.
At that point, he should have done it. We talked for months about him assuming financial responsibility when my job would inevitably fire me. He said repeatedly that he had no problems helping out. Well, he didn’t step up.

When I purchased astrology software a couple of weeks ago, I ran a forecast for myself for October/November. I was not shocked when the car thing came up again:

Transit SATURN conjoined natal Mercury
Nov 12 through Nov 30
Daily transportation may be threatened when your car or other vehicles require repairs or need to be replaced.

And again I told my man about this, and again he told me to take the car in, and again I told him unless he was going to pay for it, I couldn’t because I had no money from the state, yet. And he didn’t step up.

That brings us to this morning, when my car broke down, three days ahead of the forecast but I’d already seen it coming with my gut feeling, just wasn’t positive when. I called my man after calling the tow truck and left an angry message about how he needs to step up and take responsibility and don’t wait for me to ask, from now on, it’s HIS car, HIS groceries, HIS health problems, HIS cat maintenance – it’s all HIS and HE must be responsible.

He called me back and gave the equivalent of a kid in trouble with their Ma and told me he understood.

That being dealt with, I called my friend and asked if he could take me to my unemployment appointment if my car required actual work in the shop instead of just a battery. He said he would.
I called my friend who I’m catsitting for and told her I may not be able to get to her cats and why. She had me call her other friends and let them know. I did that as well.

The tow truck arrived after an hour and gave me a jump. I turned off the car after a minute, and tried to restart it.

Dead.

The guy gave me another jump and I called my mechanic. He could see the car today. I drove right over and without any waiting time, he installed a new battery on the spot. Yay! I watched how he did it so that I can do this myself next time.
I used to know how to work on cars, having grown up in The Auto Capital Of The World: Detroit.
But when I moved to California and got a fuel-injected car, I didn’t know how to work on the thing, so I just stopped working on it altogether and took it to the shop or to the dealership whenever I had a problem. So I’ve forgotten everything. I’d love to take classes on auto shop to relearn how to care for my own car.

But I digress.

Once I was back in business with the car, I called my friends back and told them everything was alright – called the standby catsitters back and told them I was on my way over to care for the kitties – they didn’t need to go.

And off I went.

And george swooped in, and lo, he did strike me down. I was halfway to my friend’s house when the pain hit so hard I thought I might die. I got disoriented and therefore lost to a place I know how to get to. At that moment, my man called to check on me. I told him my situation, basically to ask him to be my brains for a minute. He told me to go back home, and that he’d take me over to care for the cats later, that the cats would be okay.

The pain was full on, and now I could feel the squid and the bleeding. Ugh.
I got home, checked the mail, staggered into the house, and took a Darvocet.

I FINALLY got my first check from the unemployment office. <sarcasm>It only took about a month!</sarcasm>

I called the unemployment office and to my surprise, I got through on the first call. I pleaded with them to reschedule my appointment because I was very ill. They said NO, and gave me flashbacks of my former employer. They said if I missed the appointment, I’d be fired cut off – they’d stop payments to me for a week and schedule another phone interview so I could explain myself! Then they’d decide if I could get the week of pay back again! I told them I was fired from my job because of this illness and now they wanted to take my money away???!?!?!
They basically said sorry…yes.

I hung up and cried.

I called my friend back again and asked him again if he could take me to the unemployment office. He said he would, definitely, not a problem at all. I thanked him profusely.

He came and got me and took me to the 12:15pm appointment. I was a wreck by then – disheveled, heating pad on my lap, ashen face, bleary eyes from the medication, clutching my damned forms for the goddamned unemployment office.

I went in and discovered to my benefit that they’d changed policy. No more groups of people in counseling on how to look for a job; now it’s one-on-one, based upon the individual’s current unemployment situation. The lady saw how sick I was and went easy on me. I’d forgotten my Social Security card and so she let me by without it. I’ve already scanned the damned thing anyway and sent it in to the unemployment office, so they have it on record…
She went over the routine on how to use their resources to look for a job, etc etc, and told me that I should also look into state disability to use in conjunction with the unemployment benefits. She said that since I was ‘fired for illness’, I need to mark when I’m too sick for work on my forms. I told her I can still look for work even when sick, I have my laptop in bed. She said yes but I can’t accept a job if one calls on the same day, if I’m sick, and to cover my ass, if the unemployment office finds out, I’d best have the state disability lined up to cover me, otherwise the unemployment office could cut me off for not following the rules.

Ah Christ, people!!!!

So now I look into state disability and see if I’m eligible. I’d looked into this before and my understanding was that I needed to be out nine consecutive days before any benefits would be paid. So I think this lady is full of shit, or doesn’t understand my situation. I’ll have a look again but likely not go with it.

RIGHT. SO.

I got out of the appointment before 12:45pm and my friend dropped me off at home. I staggered into the house and the pain and bleeding ramped up again, so I took another darvocet.

This put me out for the rest of the day. As I was letting the medication take me under, I relaxed my body and begged it to let me out. I seriously just wanted to die.

While I was passed out, the ex-girlfriend of my suicidal friend called and woke me up. I thought it was him so I answered…but it was her. I ended up counselling her for what felt like an hour…and in that time my father and another friend also tried to call.

After I hung up with my friend’s ex, I called my other friend back and left a message, and I called my dad back. He’d wanted to know about the oil spill, but when he heard how horrible I sounded, he asked what was wrong. I told him it was my usual downtime, bedridden from my illness. He softened, sounded worried. He asked if there was anything that could be done. I told him unfortunately no – I’d tried surgery and they couldn’t get all the disease out because it was too close to my bladder and the surgeon didn’t want to puncture my bladder.
I know I’ve told my dad all this before. He just forgets. He’s getting older. I emailed him later and asked if he wanted me to send him any details about my disease so he can understand what’s going on.

I passed out again and my man came home from work by around 6:30pm. I forced myself out of bed and we went to take care of my friend’s cats.

Halfway there, I cried out OH NO STOP!

I’d forgotten the damned keys to her house.

At that point, I told my man I didn’t have the energy to finish the rest of the day. I’d had enough. I’m tired. I just want it all to stop. Please.

He caressed my back and shoulder as he drove. I put my head between my legs and just let my body go limp for awhile as he drove back to our house to get the keys.
Why can’t it just all stop?

My man got the keys and we started off again. We got to our friend’s house and I took care of the cats’ food and water and litter. I puttered about slowly. Then we gave the cats some lovin and brushin and they were all happy and content, and we could go.

Got back home safely. Here I am in bed. Sleeping again soon. Tomorrow is another day. George, that bastard, should be gone and my energy should be back. Tomorrow night there’s a club night going on, and several of my friends want to go.
I can do this. I need to get out. I will be well. I can do this.

Last night was the start of catsitting for a friend, but I was still on pain medication and had spent the day bedridden.
I pleaded with my man, who’d had a rough day at work, to take me to my friend’s house to catsit. Not only that though, I needed to pick up my prescription, get dinner because neither of us felt like cooking, and drop off a birthday present for a friend who was in town at the emergency room (more on that in a second).
For the record, I tried out Darvocet for the first time – just rang up my surgeon and asked her for it and she called in a script – that woman rules. :) The Darvocet is much better than the Tylenol3 – it kicks in faster but doesn’t kick me in the kidneys, and I don’t pass out in fitful nightmares.
Our friend at the E.R. – he has a ruptured disk in his neck (cervical spine) and his doctor did some testing on his nerves with lidocane earlier in the day – if the pain went away, he would know that he got the right nerves, and can proceed with cauterising the nerves later. But in the meantime, once the lidocane
wore off, if the pain was immense, my friend was told to go to E.R. – which he did. Our E.R. is much less crowded and more pleasant to deal with, so he went there. So we dropped off his birthday present, which cheered him up. :)

So anyway, my man, being the superhero that he is, did all the necessary driving last night.

Today I felt like utter hell when I woke up, yet I dragged myself out of bed because I had to go care for my friend’s cats like I promised I would.
I did accomplish that and the pain subsided, thankfully. Afterwards, I came home, showered, and picked up my friend and her fiancé from the train station. We walked around the island – he’d never been here before. Took him to Tucker’s Ice Cream, where he fell in love as we knew he would – their ice cream is the best!
And we took him to the naval base, where he went ga-ga over the battleships.
We toured the haunted U.S.S. Hornet and had a grand ol’ time.

However, while touring the Hornet, the pain started for me again. I felt it in my legs, first. It became more painful to lift my legs to step over the doorways of the ship. My legs felt heavy and stiff. Then the pain started in the pelvic region. My lower back began to ache. I felt myself bleeding. I told my friend and we called it a day.

I drove us back to my house, and we walked up to the local tea house. When we walked in, a friend of mine who works there greeted us, eyeballed me, and said, “You don’t look like you have girl do0m…”

Emotionally, my jaw dropped. I realised she must have heard about me having been ill via email – I hadn’t checked email but my man had called earlier, asking if I was up for “pissup night” that night. I had told him I wasn’t sure, that I wasn’t feeling well again, and likely he posted this to our email list of “pissup night” friends.

My smile faded when my friend said “You don’t look like you have girl do0m…”, and I told her “Yeah well I’m actually on Darvocet right now”, and explained that I’d been bedridden for the past two days and needed to get out of the house today, and did well for much of the day. She said “Ah…” and continued her work.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not MAD at my friend. I’m not upset at HER. I realised immediately that she just has no way of knowing what I go through. I’m deeply hurt by the fact that I don’t know how to respond to her comments, that I have no tangible PROOF that I’d been bedridden, that I was hurting, that I’d had a partial good day, and that doesn’t in any way mitigate or invalidate the fact that I was in pain previously, and that I had been bedridden only a day earlier.

But all I’m left with is feeling insulted, feeling invalidated, feeling unbelieved, because I don’t have a bloody dangling or severed appendage for all the world to see and believe that I am or have been or will be in pain.

It’s not fair. I don’t want to feel sorry for myself, I just want to be taken at face value. And in a world where ‘seeing is believing’, I’m just not likely to be taken at face value. I continue to fight the fight to PROVE continuously when I am in pain and need help. It’s not fair.

This is about the time I get depressed as all hell for being bedridden. I spent all day in bed yesterday. By evening, my legs were twitchy because they’d been prone for too long.
Still, by the time my man was ready for bed, so was I. You’d think that since I slept all damned day, I’d be awake all night. Nope, not when I’m in pain, bleeding like a stuck pig, and on pain medication, no. I went right back to sleep and slept all night. Didn’t want to get up this morning with my man, but I did – can’t remember why – perhaps because I was birthing squid (passing clots) and it was quite messy.

All day again today I’ve been bedridden. Today I’ve also been cold, whereas yesterday I ran warm. Being cold while cramping just makes it that much worse – my back locked up and I almost threw my shoulder again, just by turning, because all my muscles are hunched and locked in protective mode and in shivering mode at the same time.

I really started off the morning in not so much pain. I was getting the astrology stuff set up to work on today. I called the labor board again and found out they ARE going to take the case, yay!!! I’m to get some paperwork this week and then I’ll make a journal entry all about the details. I went and made breakfast, and sat back down to work….

…And that’s when the pain hit.

Since late last night I’ve been passing a lot of clots. It’s “normal” by day two anyway.

The only work I did was personal work today – I dug through my childhood diaries last night and today, looking for any mention of my period and details as to the pain. I’m finding some good information and will share that once I have the long list ready for print.

In the meantime, my kidneys are sore from all the pain meds – I always get sore sides every month by day 2.5 from all the pain meds. I’m running out, too, so placed a call to my surgeon for more meds. However, I’m requesting Darvon now instead of Tylenol3.
I’ve just been on Tylenol3 for too long – a few years now – and I’m to the point of having to take TWO pills for the pain instead of one. And Tylenol is really really bad for the kidneys and liver. And as of this month, I’m nauseated when I take Tylenol3, and I get a stomach ache.
I wonder if I’m getting an ulcer from the pain meds. :(
The other thing I hate about Tylenol3 is that it always makes me itchy. My skin just crawls. I have nightmares, too.
I’d tried percoset but felt like I was gonna die because I couldn’t breathe. Codeine too surpresses my respiratory function, but not as much as percoset. With Codeine, I get worse nightmares than I do with Tylenol3.
And long ago, I stopped taking Aleve/Naproxen/Naprosyn because my body just didn’t respond to it. The pain just did not go away. And besides that, I read that it can cause strokes!

I dunno if Darvon is much better, honestly, but I want to try something else and see if that helps the pain. And of course, I’ll continue with the Chinese herbal medication again once I’m off all this pain med crap. I hate taking too much stuff together at the same time. So the Chinese meds are on hold until george passes, then I resume for a full month leading up to george again.

Well holy crap, The Spoon Theory is so incredibly relevant to my last post, where I tried to explain how I could either clean house or go on a bike ride.

I thank my new online aquaintance – jess – for leading me to that page.

It all came about when I was on IRC asking for advice on domain names regarding my illness, and xyb suggested ‘butyoudontlooksick.com’, which would have been perfect, except it’s already taken. That’s when jess said she frequents that site (she has fibromyalgia), and she referred us to The Spoon Theory.

Yes indeedy. All so brutally true.

Also! Check out their online store! Want!!