Late February cycle
I had about 12 consecutive pain-free days from last cycle til this one.
I began getting intermittent uterine and ovarian cramping on February 16, when I was feeling sad and missing my grandmother, as it was her birthday. She’s been gone for 25 years, but I still grieve for her.
Two days later, I spent the day grieving for a friend who’s been gone for 9 years. Every year around the time of his death, I get little reminders seemingly from beyond, that he’s still with us somehow. Because I was sad, I got cramps again.
A few days later, my spouse returned from a weekend-long gaming convention, and I was happy to see him, so we were intimate. The next day, I experienced either dyspareunia or premenstrual cramping, and then a day later (yesterday), george appeared two days early.
The thing is, I think I brought it upon myself. I’ve had a rough month emotionally, as I’ve been really sad for people who have died. And then I had a really bad day at work, wherein I got emotionally involved with a child who was having tantrums. When I tried to lead her out of the room so as not to cause further disturbance to the class, she had a big meltdown. I picked her up to expedite the removal from the class, and she wriggled free and fell to the floor screaming. My face was beet red with embarrassment and also with anger. In my effort to do the right thing (get her out so as not to disturb the lesson taking place in the classroom), it actually sped up the child’s complete meltdown.
Within minutes, I felt a trickle and a hot sear of pain, and I knew that I had made not one but two bad choices: taking the child out of class and causing myself a release of stress and anger hormones, which flooded my system and started the endo flare.
And I was supposed to be the head teacher all this week, as my head teacher is on a family retreat.
As soon as I got the child stabilised emotionally, and made sure the assistant teacher in the class was still running things alright, I called upon the director and the afternoon supervisor for help in finding substitute teachers, in case I could not make it in the next day.
This morning, I woke determined to get SOME work done. I wrote:
Attention: I am going in to work. Endometriosis can DIAF.
I’m the boss, dammit; I call the shots in this body.
I got through 5 hours before the pain and exhaustion took me out of the game. Then I came home and passed out for 3 hours with second round Ibuprofen and heating pad. Outside, we had an unusually warm and sunny winter day – it was in the 70’s, which is weird even for California. In February, it’s supposed to be raining hard all through February.
But because of george, I missed a beautiful sunny day, and I will miss it again tomorrow, too.
I spent the rest of the day today couch-ridden, working on importing endo blog posts over to Facebook.
The pain has been steady throughout the day, and I resorted to taking a half Tylenol 3 pill in the evening.
After dinner, I needed the other half pill. I’ve consumed 2,000mg of Ibuprofen today. The pain has been constant at 7 on the pain scale.
This evening, still in the thick of an endo flare, I counted out the days til the next one.
The next endo flare is due on the anniversary night of one of my favourite night clubs.
I’m seriously thinking of showing up – even if I have to arrive in my wheel chair. I AM SO FURIOUS WITH THIS ILLNESS TAKING JOYFUL EVENTS AWAY FROM ME.