zeptember

After the pain hit right at the end of my shift last night, I got home and was a bedridden zombie for the rest of the night.

I was fine this morning.

Barely any bleeding. No pain. Got to work on time in pleasant spirits. Fed baby the rest of her breakfast, took her upstairs to play and dance about with her (our morning routine is me holding her and dancing around).

As I was rocking the baby to sleep for her morning nap, I suddenly felt pain in the bladder. Since the endometriosis is attached to the bladder, I’m super sensitive and can tell when the pain is hitting the uterus, the ovaries, the bowels or the bladder. All of that is clearly defined for me. The pain ramped up, I felt like I really had to go to the bathroom, but the pain one gets from a full bladder? That wasn’t the pain I was having. I can’t explain it. It’s different. That’s how I knew I was in for more trouble.

I gritted my teeth and beared it - the baby had to fall asleep first before I could get up. She’s had a rough night and didn’t really sleep past 3am so it’s imperative she gets to sleep now.

Once she was asleep, I stood up to put her in her crib, and that’s when the gushing began. My legs grew weak instantly. The baby woke when I set her in the crib, sat up and began crying. I soothed her and rubbed her back and helped her lay back down. I held onto the crib for dear life to support myself and stayed as long as I could to ensure baby drifted back to sleep.

I could feel my knees going - I was about to fall from the pain so I backed away as slowly and carefully as I could from the crib. The baby woke and began crying again. I just staggered out of the room, held onto the stair railings and made my way carefully down the stairs. Fumbled for my meds and water. Took an entire Tylenol 3 because I knew if I didn’t, I could end up back in E.R.

The result of all this pain - squid. Yes, I’m going to be very graphic.

I birthed squid as I call them - and one was a giant clot the size of the palm of my hand had come through my cervix, that’s what caused all the pain. There’s so much blood that it didn’t have time to liquify to ease through the cervix like a normal menstrual flow would do. So basically the cervix had to dilate to pass the clots. This is what causes me to collapse from the pain, or vomit, or sob uncontrollably.

I maintained today without doing any of the above. I got safely to the couch with my heating pad. I’m drugged - it’s already taken effect.

I’ve notified the baby’s mother that I took an entire Tylenol 3 and that the pain is really bad and that should her baby wake before 11am and I’m still in bad shape, she or her husband may have to come home.

Of course, the family’s cat now thinks it’s a great time to attack my laptop cord and my feet. It’s a good thing he’s so cute.

I go pass out now. Hopefully baby stays asleep for a bit.

10am Edit: Just passed another huge squid. On the phone with my GYN office now. I never pass them this huge. I’m shivering cold, shakey and nauseous. The pain radiates down to my inner thighs. The GYN office is trying to get me to my GYN directly.

Normally I reserve this for the TMI illness filter but since it’s mostly to do with work, it goes into this filter.

I went to work today because I was nervous about having missed 3 days of work already. I wasn’t ready to go back to work but for some reason I became paranoid about losing my job. Why I still care this much about any employer at this stage of life, when my health should be taking precedence, is beyond me. But I do this to myself.

It took 600mg Ibuprofen and half a Tylenol 3 to stave the pain, which was not under control until about halfway to work. I was half an hour late to work because I waited til the last second to go out the door, wondering why the hell I was doing this to myself.

It’s only a little bit about the money. It’s mostly about not letting other people down. Like I said earlier, I don’t know why I still do this.

The baby was an angel through the first half of the day. She was happy and independent in the morning, and was content to play downstairs. So I didn’t have to do a lot of lifting or climbing of stairs with her.

The afternoon however was a different story. She was needy, refused to nap, and screamed a lot. At the end of my shift, while packing up my stuff to go home, I got a hot flash, then a trickle. I bid the parent good evening, told her I had to hurry home in a race to beat the onset of pain, and off I went.

I lost the battle.

I was exiting 6th Street in SF to get to the Bay Bridge when the pain became unbearable. I popped 600mg Ibuprofen, and within 10 minutes popped half a Tylenol 3.

Eyes glazed over, firmly gripping steering wheel, staring straight ahead, I made it home, only bursting into tears from the pain once.

I popped a second half Tylenol 3 pill while waiting in traffic in Oakland.

I made it home in an hour’s time and went straight to bed. Here I am, on laptop, drugged, bedridden.

Wheeee.

Tomorrow right? Tomorrow this is gone? Shorter workday tomorrow I’m told - the baby has a doctor appt.

Surreal is talking to my mom on the phone early this morning and holding the phone to the open window so she can hear the pouring rain which was continuous for the past 24 hours it seemed…

And then by noon the sun was out and the ice cream truck was making its rounds.

The ice cream truck just went by again, and the sun is bright and the sky is brilliant blue.

I got a burst of energy and cleaned house a bit.

Ow. Just woke up a bit ago, feeling like someone crushed my lower back.

Now the pain extends to my pelvic region.

It hurts to sit or lie down, and I’m too weak to stand for very long.

I’m going to heat up a gluten-free waffle or something so that I can have something in my stomach in order to start the Tylenol 3 / Motrin cocktail.

Oh downtime, how I hate you. But I am so grateful you gave me my wedding AND Halloween pain free.

In exchange for this short term kindness, the Endometriosis is sure to punish me severely, now. I’m already slated to have my cycle twice this month as it is (now and again on Turkey Day weekend). I do not have any confidence that the pain will NOT be bad, not after how much stress I had been under in recent months, and how poorly I’d eaten under such stress.

I know there are at least three events going on tonight, one of which is walking distance from our house, but I am utterly destroyed after working a full day yesterday, coming home, setting up and working the haunted backyard at full steam ahead while chugging wine, then topping off the night at a local bar, where I proceded to drink hard liquor that I said earlier in the day I was not supposed to drink.

Quite the hangover today, and on top of it, girl do0m is starting, two days early. I knew that would happen before even drinking, cuz I was having pain as of early Friday morning.

So long story short, I won’t be making it out to any events tonight. I am disappointed with my body’s unwillingness to cooperate with my wishes to go out and party on a Saturday night. If it were just the hangover, I’d totally go out and do ‘hair of the dog’.
Alas, I’m in downtime.

I really hope we catch a break in the rain for Halloween night.

Well I wanted to get out to the club for the undead wedding themed party last Friday, but instead, the snotmonster cold I’d been fighting for a week finally caught up with me and killed me dead.

I took it easy for most of the weekend, while trying to get as many chores done as possible. Ugh, no more time, time running out. AIEEEE.

I’m tired of hemorrhaging money. Please, make it stop. Had a minor meltdown at B over this last night.

The cough and snotfest seems to have stopped as of today. I’ve coughed only twice. I spent the weekend drinking tea and water and eating assloads of vitamin C, vitamin B, cal/mag and zinc vitamins.

Although I ran errands on Saturday and Sunday, I feel like it was wasted time, all for naught, nothing accomplished. So frustrating.

The other monster I’ve been trying to keep at bay is the Endometriosis. I’ve exhibited symptoms for two damned weeks now. I blame myself for having a shitty diet because I’ve been under stress of starting a new job and continued “hurry up and wait…GO! AAAIIIIEEEE” on all the chores that need to be done before the end of this month.
When I woke up this morning, the pain was there. I checked myself every ten minutes but no girl do0m. I waited til the last possible minute to get dressed and go out the door cuz I wanted to be sure I didn’t have to call in sick. My body gave me the shaky ’sure, you’re alright’ nod, and off I went to work, zo0m.

It’s been a mellow day here with the baby. I’ve not taken her on a stroller ride outside. My body is shutting down. No energy. So tired. Knees have had it. Pelvic region aching.
I’m still on Motrin twice a day since last week.

Gah - I haven’t even gotten plane tickets to Michigan yet for November. I’ve not been home in 4 years, 3 months and 23 days (and counting). I’m going home to visit, dammit! I don’t care if Michigan will be frozen over by then! I wanna go home.
Hey, with all the bare trees Michigan will have by then, and spo0ky overcast sky, I’ll get some awesome graveyard pix for ya’ll. :p

But now, right now, I’m missing peak colour. *sob*

For the past week and a half, I’ve been experiencing mittelschmerz and low uterine pain. Today is particularly bad, with the pain sharp enough at times to make me gasp. George is due in 7 days, and I’ve already started premedicating as of today.

My diet has been shitty for the past month, due to rushing and stress. Not only that, but I read that apples and flax seeds/oil have natural estrogens in them, so I stopped eating those things until I could do further research. It seems in that time, the mid-cycle pelvic pain returned, and I caught a cold that I’ve been trying to fight off since about last Thursday. My man also got a cold and by Friday was taken down hard by it. He’s off work Monday and today because he’s coughing so much and his coworkers don’t want him to get them sick. Bleh.
I’ve been taking vitamin C and zinc every day, along with my other vitamins, to fight this off. Today I reintroduced flax and apples into my diet in the hopes that they will assist in fighting off the cold that’s going around (a friend of ours was also sick last week, same symptoms).

I will also be picking up evening primrose oil tonight on the way home, as I’ve never yet applied that remedy.

If I’m a week early, this means I cut it REAL close to the wedding with my next cycle. And I can’t bear to have that happen.