I haven’t got time for the pain
There’s no catching a break this month.
I need to go back in time to the last cycle before I record this month’s cycle, because I didn’t do an adequate enough job in my journal.
Back on April 2nd, I mentioned that I pulled the “grin and bear it” routine and toughed out the pain. That’s all I wrote to you about. However, I did make notes in my calendar, so I’ll record those here now.
Friday, April 3, 2009: The pain and bleeding ramped up about 11:20am. I had been observing children at the school I’d just been hired at. I was to report to training that following Monday. My lower back had been killing me for most of the time I was there observing (about 3 hours). When I got home, I popped Tylenol 3 and enforced bedrest for the rest of the day.
Saturday, April 4, 2009: The pain was bad during the early part of the day, but subsided by 4pm. I enforced bedrest. I bled heavy all day. There were occasional sharp pains in both of my ovaries, but the pain was mostly on the right and lower right quadrant.
Sunday, April 5, 2009: The pain was mild and the bleeding moderate. I had anxiety all day over whether I’d be able to go to work on Monday, because I’d only been bedridden for part of Friday and most of Saturday. By nighttime, I was only spotting again.
Monday, April 6, 2009: The spotting and pain ramped up at 1pm. I also got a moderate headache and a feeling of sugar crash, though I’d just eaten some gluten-free mac ‘n cheese and some cornish hen for lunch at work. I took half a Tylenol 3 and within the hour I felt a little better, but the mild pelvic pain stuck with me after that, and moderate back pain continued into the 6pm hour.
For the rest of that week – my first week on the job – I experienced moderate low back pain. I wasn’t sure if it was leftover from george, or if it was from the cervicitis, or hell, if it was from all the activity I was getting from working around children again.
I went from george pain on Monday to low back pain for the rest of the week, which ceased by Sunday, April 12th but was replaced with a bad yeast infection from the antibiotics I’d been on to treat the cervicitis. On Sunday night, I started a 7-day regimen of Monistat to make sure I wiped out the yeast infection. I had two and a half days pain-free but having to deal with wearing a pad from the nasty Monistat treatment, when Wednesday I came down with a cold. I thought it was severe dehydration and perhaps it was – but it also kicked my immune system in the junk and allowed a virus to take me down. The very next day, April 16, I had a sore throat and generally didn’t feel well. Same thing on Friday, though I attended a friend’s wedding anyway.
I woke up Saturday, April 18 feeling like a Mac truck had run over me. I was full on sick.
Because I’ve been sick as a dog with a virus caught from the children at work during my first week on the job, my body doesn’t seem to have remembered that it needed to be shutting down because of george approaching. So I had none of the usual early warning signs – no low back pain, no uterine pain, no major ovarian twinges.
Friday, April 24, 2009: I got up for work around 6:45am. I noticed the faintest pink spotting but decided I would not dwell on it, because george was due in two days, on Sunday. “NOT today. So he simply CAN’T be here”, I thought.
I popped 600mg ibuprofen and bicycled to work.
Around 10am, I was surprised to see moderate red spotting. I was not prepared. Whoops. So much for denial. I began to have mild cramps but I decided to continue to ignore the situation, because after all, george was due Sunday, NOT today.
At 1pm I was finally able to sit down and eat lunch. I’d been go go go since awakening. That’s my job, after all. On my feet all day, keeping up with children aged three to five. I was dismayed to see actual red bleeding rather than spotting. There’d been no ramp up. There’d been no dark brown spotting for a day or three. What the hell!
I decided that I could make it for four more hours like this without it leaking through my pants. The cramps REALLY wanted to come through, but again, I told myself I didn’t have time for this. I went back to the break room and finished preparing my lunch.
That’s when the head teacher came in and announced we’re having a meeting, and I was needed.
Great. I wasn’t told we’d have a meeting EVERY Friday on my lunch break like this. Dammit!!! So off I went again, go go go, and the cramps abated once more.
I was happy that this denial thing was working so well for me.
After work, I bicycled home. I didn’t have any cramps, but my body was VERY exhausted like it gets when george is around. When I got home, I let out a sigh. I was finally able to relax for a few minutes.
That’s when the pain tried to ramp up again.
So I sighed again, then said LOOK, I’M BUSY. I’LL MAKE SURE I STAY BUSY SO YOU DON’T BOTHER ME.
And with that, I got into my car and told myself I had to hurry and go go go to get my dinner, then get to my next job (babysitting for a family in town). But this time, george wasn’t listening, so I popped a half of a Tylenol 3 to make sure he listened.
That seemed to do the trick.
I didn’t have to pop another half Tylenol 3 for three hours.
I took an hour nap from 9pm – 10pm while the baby slept. The parents returned home around 11:30pm.
By the time I got home, I’d worked myself into such a state over the whole psychology denial thing, that I was hyper. I couldn’t calm down. I told my husband I was actually afraid to calm down, because then the pain would arrive.
Then I realised I’d bled through my fabric pad and through my underwear, and anxiety took hold. I called out to my husband for help, and declared that I should start leaving extra underwear in the bathroom during my period.
He convinced me that I really should calm down, that I needed my rest, that I didn’t have to be to my next job until 6pm Saturday.
The moment I settled into bed, my flow became heavy again.
I had minor cramping on and off during the night, but was mostly just heavy.
The pain level for me stayed at about 3 – 4 on the scale.
Saturday, April 25, 2009: I spent the day popping half Tylenol 3 pills every one to three hours, just to make sure the pain didn’t take over. I forced myself to take a nap for an hour, from 3pm – 4pm, so I’d be rested for work. I ate dinner and drove rather than bicycled to work (babysitting for another family in town). When I woke from nap, the pain was about a 6.5 on the pain scale. This dismayed me, since I had to be to work in an hour and fifteen minutes. The pain remained the same even as I left for work, but I used the same tactic as I’d done on Friday – “I can’t feel you, I don’t have time for this…”
The bleeding was still heavy. The parents left me with a sleeping baby at 7pm – it took an hour for them to finish getting ready and put the baby down cuz he’d had a long day. I set up camp in the dining room to work on my teacher practicum and that’s when I began to have lots of sharp, jarring pain on the lower left quadrant/ovary. It was enough to make me gasp at times. At 7:16pm for example, I had three sharp pains in succession that took my breath away and made me wheeze from the pain, and a fourth that was much less severe. Then a minute later, another sharp pain that made me wince.
I had taken half a Tylenol 3 at 5:30pm and didn’t want to take any more if I could help it.
I got two more stabs of pain – 7pm and 9:22pm. Another stab at 9:35pm. Then at 9:37pm, I got a right side stab. This continued on and off until I got home from babysitting around 12:30am.
The bleeding was heavy the entire day and continued throughout the night. I took a whole Tylenol 3 and went to bed.
Around 3:30am, I woke with a major coughing/hacking fit, and almost threw up. I had to flush my nose and throat with salt water, and things eased up. But all that trauma of coughing so violently brought on lower back spasms and cramps (roughly a 7.5 on the pain scale). I took a teaspoonful of codeine cough syrup, warmed a heating pad, and went back to bed. The cramps abated within an hour.
Sunday, April 26, 2009: Still bleeding heavy. My uterus felt raw and gutted, and my legs were shaky. I ate some breakfast and was just about to take a Tylenol 3 when the pain got really bad (I’d say 7.5-8 on the scale). I went to the bathroom, and actually, having a bowel movement eased everything up. The pain passed. I told myself I’d take it easy and enjoy bedrest all day, but then I realised that I didn’t have any clean clothes for the coming work week, and my husband was off at yet another game convention, so he couldn’t help me. I popped a whole Tylenol 3 and set off to do my laundry. I moved very slowly and methodically. The pain ramped up a few times but never enough to make me cry.
I didn’t finally get into bed until 3pm, but at least it’s something. I will try to remain bedridden for the rest of the day.
So let’s summarise the month of April:
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| Click the image to make bigger. |
Now to address the last bit…My monthly cycle has been shortening steadily since February, 2009.
In February, george was 3 days early
In March, george was 1 day early
In April, george happened twice. On April 2, he was 1 day early, and on April 24, he was 2 days early.
My cycle is still five days long each month, but for some reason, it’s cutting back from happening every 26 days to every 23-25 days.
The last time I had this profound a change in the length of time between my cycle each month, I was about 25 years old. I went from a seven-day cycle to a five to six day cycle back then. It took me about six months before I realised what was happening.
This earliness of course has screwed with our honeymoon plans. I’ve had seven whole days removed because of george being early a day here and a day there since February. This means the entire last week, or the middle of our honeymoon, will be messed up, because george keeps showing up early each month.
Is this perimenopause? Is this something else? The mysterious cervicitis occurrence has never been explained. What’s going on with my body!?!??