I Will Not Suffer In Silence

my laundry went into the dryer around 5:30pm yesterday, and i slept on the couch the entire hour it was drying. i woke with a cry when the alarm went off, letting me know the laundry was done drying. i trudged to the back of the house, put in a new load to dry, brought back the dry clothes, and went right back to sleep on the couch.

you’d think only 20 minutes had passed, but i slept another entire hour and was rudely awakened by the alarm again. i fetched that load of laundry and brought it back to the house, let it sit in the living room still in the basket, changed into my pajamas, and went to bed.

i was in bed for the night at 7:30pm and only woke when my alarm went off this morning at 6:25am.

my entire face is puffy, most notably my eyes. it could be from allergies – the bedroom was not dusted the entire week we were gone, and we didn’t change the sheets upon our return home. or it could be that my body is retaining fluids – my abdomen has been distended, and my ankles have been more puffy than usual over the past week and a half.

the only thing leaning me towards allergies is that my throat is also feeling swollen/congested.

when i got up and out of bed this morning, there was no uterine/bladder pulling and pain. when i urinated this morning, there was no hesitation, no pain, no discharge, no blood.

we’ll see how today goes, pain-wise.

i’m very impatient for the MRI in two days.

i was able to sleep through the night and i woke up pain-free.

i went to work today but by 10am, pain was setting in again. it wasn’t the same pain as the day before – this time the pain felt like premenstrual cramps and was situated in the lower back, radiating around to the front. the pain felt more ovarian and uterine than bladder-related.

i went to the bathroom at 11am and to my horror, saw pink on the tissue. i wiped again and there was none.
at 12:15pm, i went to the bathroom again – same thing – blood the first time and none the second time. pretty frustrating because i don’t know if the blood is in my urine or if it is vaginal. i did however have a significant amount of clear, slippery vaginal mucous last night, and the mucous was bright yellow viscous today. my first thought was, ‘based on all the pain i was in yesterday, did another ovarian cyst rupture?’

the thing is, my symptoms are not the same as they were in march. i did not have nausea, i did not have pinching in the ovaries – it felt like the pinching was in the bladder and/or uterus and hurting on the left side. Perhaps my left ovary has been pulled by adhesions again? at time of surgery, my left ovary was found to be twisted and stuck to the back of my uterus.

i took no medication today because i wanted to see how bad the pain would get.

the pain has been steady at 3-4 on the scale all day, and i have had pain radiating down my inner thighs towards my knees (but the pain stops halfway between). i am extremely tired, and as a matter of fact, i’m sleeping while the laundry is being done, and likely just going to bed for the night.

4:55pm

I held in urine to deal with puking husband on first plane ride – i nearly wet myself searching for bathroom at the end of the flight, and then once in the bathroom, it was hard for the urine to start pouring forth, then got a good stream, then it wouldn’t stop – it was a trickle so i pushed a little to get it out…

halfway through second flight, the pain set in – thought it was uterine and/or ovarian – towards the left side. happened when i shifted in my seat or bent forward in my seat.

had a lot of gas on flight home – i let some out but mostly held that in, too. at one point some gas shifted in me and i swear i felt gas bubbles rise all the way up towards my chest – it was creepy.

on the second flight home, i used the bathroom once or twice. i did not have any problem walking the narrow aisle to and from the bathroom, or sitting back down in my seat.

when we got off the plane, my husband needed a bathroom to clean up a bit, and i stood outside the bathroom waiting for him for many minutes.
he emerged from the bathroom and got his belongings, and we set off towards baggage claim.

that’s when the searing pain set in with every step. the pain stabbed every time i moved my left leg forward. i thought i just needed to walk it out, so i kept walking, and grunting in pain.
the pain felt like i had a string tangled inside – connecting from my bladder to the left side of my pubic bone or the left inner crease where my leg meets my pelvis – and every time i took a step with my left leg, it was pulling on this string. each pull felt like it was trying to tear at my bladder and uterus – tear it downwards and to the left.

by the time we rounded the first corner in the airport (perhaps 30 or 60 seconds of walking), i was seriously considering a wheelchair, because i was ready to cry from the pain.

i analysed the pain – it was burning, rather than stabbing or pulsing – which told me i had an acute onset infection of some sort, rather than something being strained.
i ran through all the possible causes:
i held my urine for too long and stained my bladder as a result.
i wore nylon-based panties last night and changed into a new pair this morning because that’s all i had left in my luggage, and now i’ve given myself a UTI as a result.
i’ve been drinking far too much coffee and i had faygo pop three times in the past week, and now i have a UTI as a result.

we had to stop multiple times, and my brows were furrowed from the pain, and i had glassy eyes ready to spill tears. i kept saying WTF and asking out loud what happened and how did this happen, etc. i was really mad at my body. here i was, supposed to be guiding my exhausted husband through baggage claim and out to long term parking so we could get home and get him into the shower – he’d had such a rough flight and had puked several times – but instead, my body began to fail and i ended up being the one who needed care.
my husband of course seemed frustrated – he really wanted to get home, and he really wanted me to press on, but i had to keep stopping. when we emerged from the airport into the ground transportation wing, we could see the long term parking bus up ahead, but i had to stop. we had to stand there for several minutes, because i was starting to cry from the pain. standing or sitting eased the pain from 8.5 down to a 3 on the scale. i became afraid to move any further, and so we stood for i dunno – 10 minutes or so – before i could gather up the courage to walk the rest of the way to the bus stop.

i did not cave in and get a wheelchair because i felt too embarrassed to do so. people on our flight or in general in the airport might see that i was walking just fine to them earlier, and now here i am being a crybaby in a wheelchair. i couldn’t handle what total strangers might think of me. how lame is that?!?

the bus departed as we walked towards it, and my husband slumped his shoulders in frustration. i knew there’d be another bus along shortly but had no energy to say so. we got to the bus stop and i sat down gingerly.
when the next bus arrived, i stood up and cried out in pain. i tried to pull my suitcase but the pain was so strong, i asked my husband to get it onto the bus for me. once on the bus, i sat down and tried to take off my backpack, and cried out in pain again – now even just the effort of moving something more than a pound in weight was too much strain on my pelvic region. people on the bus were staring at me since the moment i set foot on the bus without my luggage. i wanted to tell them to piss off.

I popped a Tylenol 3 but i tell you – it did no good. I had pain all the way home from the airport. I got home and popped 800mg ibuprofen gelcaps and THAT did the trick – within a couple of hours, the pain was fluctuating between 2-5 on the scale.

I’m in Michigan – first time I’ve been home in six years. Updates may be sparse. Here’s what I have to update with so far:

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 – got george, stayed home from work.

Thursday, May 13, 2010 – stayed home, cried from george pain, it was so bad.

Friday, May 14, 2010 – flew to michigan – bad george cramps necessitating 1 Tylenol 3 halfway through the flight. Got in, checked into hotel, my husband crashed out, I felt well enough to join my chosen sister, her husband and their two kids for dinner at TGI Fridays.

After dinner, my sis and I went to Borders Books and to CVS drugstore, then met up with the rest of the family at home. I got back to the hotel around 1:30am. The bleeding subsided overnight.

Saturday, May 15, 2010 – cousins reunion – we checked out of the hotel, had coney island for brunch, which consisted of coney dogs (no buns), chili, onions, mustard, cheddar, and a chocolate shake which can only be described as a corn syrupy Hershey chocolatified toxic wasteland for my body. It was kinda gross.

I was shopping w/ my husband and my cousin Jennifer for party supplies when the pain and bleeding returned – it ramped up to 8 on the scale within half an hour. I went grey in Trader Joe’s and spent the next few hours on Jenny’s couch on 1.5 Tylenol 3 and 600mg ibu.
I’d already taken half a Tylenol 3 and 600mg ibu 2 hours earlier to keep the pain at bay but it didn’t work.

My cousins showed up for the party really late – between 4-5pm – and we went til 11pm.
Only Five cousins out of 16 living Michigan-centric cousins showed up. Poo.

My pain went away by around 8 or 9pm so I made the decision to go to a nightclub w/ friends like we’d planned. My cousin let us get ready at her house and all the remaining cousins marvelled at our gothic attire, heh. ;)

We didn’t get to the club til 1:30am because of a traffic jam, which was due to a hillbilly festival called the Detroit Hoedown. It was frustrating and tense and arrrghh but thankfully we got to our hotel at the Renaissance Center, checked in our luggage, and got a cab ride to the club, where several friends had stuck around patiently for our arrival. Also, thank goodness the club stays open til after 4am.

Five friends were there – two stayed til closing with us, and then we all went to the diner formerly known as Citybites (now Luci and something). We sat at the bar and we were served greasy spoon food by a goth chick and two stoner dudes working the kitchen. All provided silliness – it was after all 4:30am.
I think all told there may have been 15 people in the diner – all floating in at the same time – rush hour for the tiny diner.

Our friends gave us a ride back to the hotel and we passed out until 2pm Sunday.
George had abated overnight, and had not returned. Yay! My husband slept while I showered – I woke him at 2:45pm.

We moseyed into some clothes and finally walked out of the hotel and out to Greektown for a late lunch around 4pm.

After lunch, we walked back, hung out at the river front, then took off in our rental car for the ‘burbs, where I needed to buy a birthday prezzie for my chosen sister’s daughter.

While we were out, george struck AGAIN.

The pain ramped up to a 6.5 and to my horror, I had no pads with me for the bleeding, which had also returned.
I refused to take meds and toughed it out because I was so mad at my body. Yeah…I know. Makes no sense. I do this every month. I get mad at what my body’s doing and refuse to treat the pain. I’m strange.
Instead, I wanted Dairy Queen. Yes, Dairy Queen. I got a heath bar blizzard to eat. There aren’t many Dairy Queens in the Bay Area where I live, and it was a common summertime treat for me when I grew up in michigan, so being in Michigan visiting again, I had to have a dairy queen blizzard.
The pain of course was not helped by the ingestion of dairy, I knew that but went ahead with it, anyway.

We got back to the hotel and I pretty much turned in for the night. here I am, journaling from the laptop in bed, as the Detroit Hoedown wraps up its weekend 53 stories below me next door in Hart Plaza. I can hear the crowd screaming, and guitars wailing, and the occasional murmur of human voices over the microphones.

I hope george is gone tomorrow – we’re going to the zoo with my chosen sister and her family.

I have crossed over into the Underworld for my monthly journey.

Each journey is different, but the pain and medication are my constants. Every journey takes me on a different path through the darkness, so I’ll never know if I’ll find my way back out again or not.

The journey today entails the following:

• The hard-wired fire alarm has decided to start peeping. I have notified the landlady and she should be here today to disconnect it. Thankfully, we also have battery-operated alarms in the house as backups.
  The peeping is highly unnerving – it makes me want to burst into tears. And so I close the bedroom door and turn up the music a bit to drown the peeping out.
  The problem is that when on Tylenol 3, my hearing becomes highly sensitive to any noise. I mentioned this yesterday, when I was going mad from all the scratching noises I could not locate. My ears prick up and my head pounds and my nerves go through the roof.
  So today I chose gentle music, and also turned on the HEPA fan, my personal white noise favourite, and that helped. The other problem became being trapped in the bedroom. While it’s good to get some more packing done, I still needed to clean house and cook. Ain’t no one else here but me to do all this. My husband is at work.
  The landlady came by and unhooked the hard-wired alarm and took it away. The moment she was out of sight, the peeping began again, and that’s when I realised I’d had the wrong fire alarm pegged. It was actually the battery-operated alarm in the computer room, right next to the hallway. I figured I could just take care of that, myself. I was wrong.
  I broke off one of the hinge locks in trying to pry the damned thing open. I grabbed a flathead screwdriver, and once I got the compartment open, I removed the old battery. Then I put the the new battery in, head-first. It got stuck when I tried to push the butt of the battery down. Then I could not remove the battery. Normal people could use their nails, but mine are brittle at the moment (see below), and I yelped in pain as I tore several fingernails trying to remove the battery. So I grabbed the screwdriver. As I tried to get the best careful leverage on the battery, I pressed my left index finger down to grip the alarm case…and punctured my finger on the broken plastic piece.
  Now I was bleeding on the damned fire alarm.
  I finally got the battery in butt-first and was able to screw the thing back into place on the ceiling, but holy shit, what a feat when stoned on narcotics! Oh and the pain ramped up during this whole episode, because I had gotten mad, which caused a hormone rush. Anytime hormones go flying in the bloodstream, an endometriosis flare is made that much more painful.

• Speaking of fingers – mine are disintegrating. The dermatitis is rampant again on my left thumb, my right ring finger, and my right pinky finger. Is it contact dermatitis from the soaps and other stuff at work? Is it from food allergies – all the tomato sauce I’ve been eating lately? Is it from cheese? Is it from the cow’s milk yoghurt? Is it from the protein bars I eat? Is it from the Trader Joe’s Indian style crepes I’ve been eating?
  Whatever the reason, it’s painful, because the skin is splitting open and bleeding, and some of the skin is just flaking up and catching on fabrics, which then pulls the skin and hurts. I bandage the fingers but the bandages keep getting wet cuz it’s hard to wash just a couple fingers at a time after every trip to the bathroom. And uh, with endometriosis flaring, there are frequent trips to the bathroom.

• For over a week, despite taking all of my supplements regularly, my nails have gone brittle and shattered and/or splintered again.

• It’s hard to breathe at times from being stoned on Tylenol 3, but I still feel all the pain areas moderately. I keep falling asleep in the middle of activities like typing, packing my suitcase, and cleaning.

• I have vegetables that must be cooked up and portions frozen, or else it will go bad, and there’s no one else to do it but me…me with a sharp knife in this stoned condition…and then me with a lit gas stove and a pot of boiling water.
  One time, I forgot about the tea kettle and all the water evaporated and the fire burned the pot to irreparable damage, setting off the fire alarm.
  Would you rather the vegetables go bad? But I paid so much money for them! They are organic and supposedly pesticide-free!
  There’s no one else here but me to do this. My husband gets home late from work.

• Decisions – decisions are hard when I am in pain and/or on pain medication. I cannot decide simple things, such as which vegetable to start cutting up, first. I cannot keep track of which pieces of clothes go together to make an outfit, even though all the pieces are sitting right in front of me, so I cannot decide what is best to pack for my upcoming Michigan trip. I cannot decide which chore needs to be done, first, so I just sit or stand there, staring off into space. I cannot decide what to eat, so I spend much of the day grazing or not eating at all. Hunger leads to low blood sugar and therefore makes my pain worse, because hypoglycemia means the body’s hormones are thrown out of whack. Hormones are what are already going haywire with an endo flare, and so the pain increases with the agitation.

• Everything looks myopic when one is suffering with chronic pain (I’ve mentioned this vision thing before). Walking around in a blurry pain haze, along with the rampant indecision, on top of everything else, just makes life that much more stressful and depressing.

 
Throughout the journey in the Underworld, these obstacles and frustrations will be magnified, and will contribute to further depression and disillusionment.

My goal during each trip through the Underworld is to make it back out alive.

So far, I’m chuckling at how much today has sucked emotionally and physically for me, and I’m not daring to wonder what else is in store. I’m just going to get through the next few mintues at a time until I can figure out how to get the hell out of here again.

• Annnd right on cue…a sharp, loud nail clipper type noise just began from outside. It is the next-door neighbor, pruning her small (sago or pindo) palm tree. The sound of nail clippers in general is usually enough to send me over the edge, and the sound magnified on Tylenol 3 can make me rage-worthy. But to bring in the equivalent of foot-long nail clippers, which make even louder noise? COME ON! You have GOT to be kidding me, Universe!!!

Nearly five hours after my last journal entry, and four days late, george has finally arrived.

It was around 2:45pm. I was on hold with an insurance company, folding some laundry, when I suddenly got very hot and my pelvis started burning with pain. I went to the bathroom and there was george, bright red and spotty.

Within 20 minutes, the pain ramped up, though the bleeding did not. My entire pelvic region is on prickly fire, and it’s radiating down my inner thighs and tops of my legs – this time only to my knees as it usually does. The pelvic pain is actually wrapping around my hips and expanding into my buttocks. It rarely does that, and this fast from onset of menstruation. I’m already on Tylenol 3 within the first hour of george. I’ve been on ibuprofen all day for several days already.

Of all the times for george to be super spiteful to me and wanting to create cause for an E.R. visit, he’s picked this cycle. I need to be on an airplane in 37 hours.

This is such bullshit. I’m NEVER this late!!!

The good news I have so far today is that I got two loads of laundry done, the dishes are washed, my suitcase is a third packed, and my latest food experiment revealed that tomato sauce on my gluten-free pizzas MUST be the culprit, cuz with white sauce I had no reaction whatsoever.
Gotta look forward to the little things I guess.

I don’t feel like I fully conveyed my sense of frustration and panic over my highly regular cycle throwing me for this much of a loop.

When my period is even a day late, I freak out, since it’s a trigger for me. I’ve been pregnant twice in my life, with the first time being at age 18. I have never gotten over the trauma from that first unwanted pregnancy – I always feel like I’ll be in big trouble, like my life will be over, like I’ve really screwed up this time, etc. The weight of this stress is enough to throw my shoulders and back out. I’m nearly to that point today, and I took a mental health day off work because of it.

I feel like I’m in limbo whenever my period is late. I go through each minute of each day knowing I should have been bedridden already. I’d already planned for the time off work. I’d already stocked up on groceries and tried to prep the house for my descent to the underworld. And then george is a no-show and I’m left biding my time, Waiting For It.
I’m in that special hell where I cannot exert myself too much because it causes pain…but I’m not in debilitating pain. And I’m super tired – I want to sleep all day and all night. And yet because there is no constant gnawing pain and/or bleeding going on, I feel like I’m expected to BE somewhere and DO something productive. But my body isn’t up for it. But my mind is restless. So the guilt sets in. I have video blogged about the guilt before (catch it here and here), but it’s so hard to LEARN the lesson and just be okay with whatever my cycle is doing – just roll with it.

I get so caught up in knowing where my uptime and downtime is, that if I end up with a little more uptime than expected, I freak out over it. I feel like something is seriously wrong. It’s like I’ve told myself I’m not allowed to go over 25 days between menstrual cycles – that if I do, it means I’ve messed up big time (see above-mentioned trigger).

Now, the last time my menstrual cycle did a huge change on me was 13 years ago, probably as I was settling in from a major life change – moving across country.

Now I’m edging up on the age of menopause, so I should expect that my menstrual cycle is going to start acting funny, and that this will last for years until I stop menstruating altogether.

But it’s not reassuring. I know I have an ovarian cyst, that I’m prone to the cysts, and that if the cysts grows bigger than 4cm, I have to consider cancer testing.

I have an MRI scheduled in two weeks, but I’m not reassured. I called the doctor but they have no openings today or tomorrow, the soonest I can get the MRI is next week, but I’ll be in Michigan.

So it’s the waiting game. I’m in Limbo, that special hell where I wait for either my period to show up or positive pregnancy test or the MRI to confirm Something Bad™.

This morning, I went out back of the house and tried a bit of tetris in the storage unit. It went well, but the exertion left me nauseous, dizzy, weak/trembling. Between that and the fact that my vaginal mucus FINALLY turned slightly pinkish this morning, that’s all I have to go on that george will be here soon.

Normally it’s nothing for me to lift and move a few things in the storage unit…but it’s 30 minutes later and I’m still shakey and nauseous. The nausea is from the damned ovarian cyst.

My cats caught sight of the cat carrier and luggage and made their way quickly to the closet. Now I keep hearing a scratching sound, but I don’t think it’s the cats. At least, it wasn’t when I last checked. Someone next door outside or someone upstairs from me is sweeping or brushing at something, I guess. But it’s driving me nuts because I’m already in a panic state. I turned on Internet radio to drown the brain weasels and the scratching noise. It’s helping a little.

In the meantime, the nerves have flared up in my legs – I’m getting nerve pain down my inner thighs and tops of my legs all the way to my calves. Usually the pain only goes to my knees. The radiating nerve pain is another sign of george.

Only three people responded to my LJ query on the gabapentin, and two out of three replies were negative, saying it does little to nothing for the pain. Two out of three replies said you can feel very drowsy/drunk, which is what everyone else is saying, too. Even taking it at night, one will wake up quite groggy the next day, so said Dr. Pham herself at my meeting with her last week.

Several people have said you cannot take gabapentin casually – you must ramp up slowly and taper off very slowly or it can cause seizures and other negative side effects. Several people noted zombie-like traits.

I even talked with one of the parents at the school I work for, cuz she’s a neuro-something professor at a local university. She also said one must taper very slowly off the stuff, and that the two big issues with it are suicidal ideation and heavy fatigue.

And then on Saturday, I went to a friend’s birthday party and found out his girlfriend just started taking gabapentin for cluster migraines. She was a total zombie and her boyfriend looked forlorn over it, but nothing else was stopping the cluster migraines, which were landing her in the E.R.

I read again about all the suicides associated with gabapentin, and I’m terrified of this damned drug.

At work today, I mentioned the drug to a co-worker who had suggested I try valium for the pain. I told her I’d tried that and also muscle relaxers to no avail. She asked if most of my pain was actually nerve related and I said yeah, my doctors think so, and they want to put me on neurontin. She thought this was a great idea, and balked at my reasoning for not wanting to try neurontin.

She didn’t know about the suicide risk but after I told her she shrugged and said to stay positive and Just Try It, See What Happens. I think she said she’d taken neurontin before, and it didn’t work out for her, but not for the reasons I was stating.

Ya know, I’ve been down that road.

First of all, she has a *totally* different condition than I do – it’s brain-based, not chronic pelvic pain-based.

Second of all, I’ve done the Just Try It, See What Happens bullshit at the request of parents, doctors, well-meaning friends, acquaintances and strangers alike.

It doesn’t turn out well for me.

But let me tell you why.

I’m diagnosed with Major Depression and have become suicidal on antidepressants and hormonal treatments alike. I’m not going to try out epilepsy medication (neurontin) or another antidepressant (cymbalta) cuz ya know, I think I already know how it will turn out. I need to go to school this summer. I need to have my own mental faculties in place – I can’t afford to be a zombie or a suicidal freak right now. Sorry. I’d rather live and suffer with endometriosis than die a wretched death due to medicinal side effects. In case you hadn’t noticed, I have tried a lot of medicine and treatments in my 25 years of dealing with this illness. I have learned to recognise MY gut feeling on a course of pain management, and I have not always trusted my gut feeling, and I have suffered for it. My gut feeling is usually correct. Other people’s suggestions on my course of treatment are usually incorrect.

After ending my convo with my co-worker (who incidentally has had this attitude with me before, when I was going through repeated sinus infections), I felt angry.

I know she means well. I know she has no idea what I go through. It’s not her as a person that I’m angry at. It’s the ignorance and acting as an authority on a subject one really knows nothing about in all circumstances that really sticks in my craw. It’s a trigger, a button, a pet peeve.

To quote from O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill:

The price you pay, for telling me what to put in my body, or telling me with authority how to successfully treat this illness in my body, and expecting me to blindly obey is,

I collect your effin head.

Now if anyone has got anything else to say, NOW’S the effing time!

Thank you.

George is two days late. He was due Sunday. Because I always count the due date as Day 1, I’m going to say he’s actually three days late.

Last month, I was diagnosed with a .9cm chocolate cyst (endometrioma) on the right ovary.

A month before that, I was sure I’d had an ovarian cyst which ruptured.

Either that cyst did not rupture and continued to grow from March to April, and then from April to May, or I’ve developed a new ovarian cyst since April.

In either case, my reality is that I do have an ovarian cyst, which I can tell you about with my own authority and experience, and I can back it up with the ultrasound I had on April 21.

Before March 2010, the last ovarian cyst that I really felt and had complications with was in November/December, 2008. I suspected an ovarian cyst in October 2009, but I didn’t follow up on it in my journal, so I dunno if I had a cyst or not.

So my own authority and experience this time around matches up with my symptoms in November/December 2008 as well as my symptoms in March, 2010: during the current cycle, I was supposed to begin menstruating on Sunday, May 9, but george is nowhere to be seen. Instead, I began experiencing stabby right side ovarian pain on April 30, which has lasted to the present day.

Going back through my calender, I noted:

Monday, May 3 – left side ovarian pain started.

Tuesday, May 4, – sharp low uterine, upper vaginal pain – intermittent. Heavy fatigue throughout the day. Full uterine and ovarian (both sides) pain at a dull constant level throughout the day, rising to 4 at times on the pain scale. Took 400mg Ibuprofen at 8pm, took 400mg more at 9:30pm.

Wednesday, May 5 – Fatigue, achey, intermittent uterine pain

Thursday, May 6 – sharp pelvic pain – stabbing left ovarian, sharp intermittent low uterine pain. Uterine pain became constant by 2pm. Large hip circles earlier that morning to manage the pain were not successful.

Friday, May 7 – Constant low uterine cramps. Highly emotional all day, turning to high irritability by nightfall. Had food reaction – I suspect either the ‘smoked’ cheddar/mozz cheese or the marinara sauce on my gluten-free pizza.

Saturday, May 8 – Constant low grade uterine and ovarian pain. On ibu all day – consumed over 2,000mg. Still quite irritable.

Sunday, May 9 – George is a no-show. Moderate low back pain, on ibuprofen again but only took 800mg total and toughed out the pain. intermittent continued uterine and ovarian cramps.

Monday, May 10 – I didn’t record anything that day because I was out of the house running lots of errands after work til nearly bedtime to prepare for upcoming Michigan trip.

Tuesday (today) May 11 – Pinching/stabbing right side ovarian pain. Took 600mg ibu first thing in the morning, 600mg ibu around 2pm. Heavy fatigue all day. Mild to moderate intermittent uterine and right side only ovarian pain all day.

(side note: I’ve tried my gluten-free pizzas several times since May 7 and the only constant is the tomato sauce – all other ingredients have been changed up – so I bet my tomato allergy has caught up with me again after being dormant for years…just like my citrus allergy caught up with me again last October).

(another side note: I’ve only been to the gym twice this month, and I bicycled five times this month, with the last time being a week ago – May 4)

The ovarian pain, the low back pain, the fatigue – all of that is part of my usual pre-menstrual pain, but I also had vaginal pain and really tender/painful breasts and nipples this cycle, and THAT for me smacks of ovarian cyst.
Given that I knew I had a cyst in March, and a cyst was found via ultrasound in April, it’s pretty much confirmed for me that the reason why my period is late is that the cyst is still growing and causing problems.
I think the longest my period has been late during an ovarian cyst flare has been three days. So george should therefore be here by tonight or tomorrow.

Knowing that helps me not to freak out so much, cuz by last night I was freaking out in the most irrational ways:

• OMG what did my acupuncturist do to me last Thursday – she did so good that not only do I not have massive pain, I am not bleeding at all!
• OMG I’M PREGNANT!
• OMG MY WEEKEND IN MICHIGAN IS RUINED – I’LL BE BLEEDING AND IN HORRIBLE PAIN ON THE PLANE AND IN MICHIGAN DURING THE PLANNED PARTIES AND CLUB NIGHTS!
• OMG IS THIS WHAT ADENOMYOSIS DOES?
• OMG I HAVE CANCER!
• OMG I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!

 
I’m much calmer today after reading up on ovarian cysts again, and going back through my journal entries on my previous cysts. I’m falling more into acceptance with what is happening, and adopting the ‘This too shall pass’ mentality.
I’m still pissed off that my weekend plans are likely ruined, but the truth is that these things can easily be rescheduled before I fly back to California.

I’ve never flown on an airplane during a my period, and my period is ALWAYS a nightmare of pain, so this should be interesting. :(