Category: Health

Gynaecological Whiplash #Periodically 15

I feel like I should start this blog with a “Previously on #Periodically…” but it might just be easier to read Periodically 10, 11 and 12 if you’re new. If you (understandably) can’t be bothered, here’s the gist: in August I had laparoscopic surgery to look for endometriosis, they found nothing but a regular (functional/ovulation) cyst on my right ovary and said there was “no gynaecological cause of pain”. While my belly button took some recovery meanders, I readied myself for my first doctors appointment since moving back to Essex and to look beyond gynaecology (towards bowels and bladder) to find a cause for my pelvic pain. Since then I’ve processed the news and the language issues I was worrying about in Articulating Pain – saying “dementors” instead of pelvic pain has stuck pretty firmly in my vocabulary.

I must confess, trying to find the words to articulate how confused I am at the moment is proving difficult. Every time I process one fact, something contradicts it and I’m in a new hole of confusion and disillusion. So bear with me.

October started with September’s late period and a whole load of nauseating, black-out pain. And it really surprised me. I was surprised because by linguistically and medically disassociating my pain from my menstrual cycle, I think I thought the gynaecological symptoms would disassociate themselves too. Foolish, of course, but that period was a bit of a wake up call.

Before my first GP appointment I had my symptom spiel ready, I’d checked that my discharge letter from Swansea had transferred and I was ready to start the process once again. Dr C, my new GP, listened to my symptoms, felt my abdomen, read the “no gynaecological cause of pain” letter, then turned to me and said “I am not convinced”. Excuse me? “I am not convinced that it is not gynaecological. You don’t experience painful periods or painful sex unless there is a gynaecological problem”. He ordered an ultrasound and some blood tests and said he would refer me to a gynaecologist.

I was pissed off. I’d been jokingly forecasting that the doctor was going to refer me to a gyane in this appointment for weeks but I had been joking. I was mad, and my general attitude was “it has taken me 12 months to get to where I am now (which is nowhere) and now we’re going to start all over again from the same place”. Basically, I sulked for a fortnight. Until…

This week, I headed to the ultrasound with my mum, confused as to why they hadn’t told me to drink a litre of water like last time. The reason I didn’t need any water was because it happened to be an internal ultrasound. Now they had my attention – I’d be moaning for months that it seemed strange to me that I’d never had one of these. While Dr T, who carried out the ultrasound, and the chaperone described the device as a “wet tampon”, I would describe it as a very solid USB dildo that’s plugged into a computer being watched by two doctors and your mum. To my surprise, it hurt almost as much as sex and has left me in the same horrible post-sex pain, but perhaps we now know why.

I can’t believe I’m writing this. I have a cyst! Two actually, on my right ovary. Yep, what the fuck? Sorry I can’t be more eloquent about this but I am so beyond confused and conflicted at this point that the words in sentence putting is falling out of nick. (What?) One is a small 2cm functional cyst – potentially an ovulation cyst but where I was in my cycle would suggest otherwise. The other cyst however is over 4cm and looks like an hemorrhagic cyst, meaning it has been bled into, which is, get this, potentially an endometrioma or endometrioid cyst. Hmm, those words sound familiar, don’t they?

Once I had my nickers back on my mum and I expressed our shock upon this discovery to Dr T, explaining the fruitless laparoscopy results just two months earlier. Dr T said: “what and the laparoscopy didn’t find any endometriosis? That’s funny because all your symptoms point towards that”. We all laughed and I went home with the promise that we’ll check to see if the cyst is still there and whether it has grown in six weeks.

I say laugh but I mean a sort of hysterical confusion and shock induced gurgle. Now, to answer some question my friends have hit me with since the Great Cyst Discovery of October ’17:

What does this mean? I don’t know.
Why didn’t they find it in the surgery? I don’t know. It’s possible that it wasn’t there, or that cysts have come and gone and during the lap things just happened to be clear.
Is this PCOS? I don’t know.
Is this endometriosis? I don’t know.
Will they take it out? I don’t know – seems unlikely given my favourite sentence “sometimes you just have to live with it” was uttered during this appointment.
If they do, would you want to go through surgery (belly button nightmares) all over again? I don’t know.
Did they actually do anything in the laparoscopy or did they just cut you open, have a cup of tea and then stitch you up (badly)? Maybe. No. A lot of my frustration earlier this week was directed at the surgeons in Swansea, but I know that’s unfair. They knew what they were doing, things must’ve been clear in August. Or maybe the functional cyst they saw was not as functional as they thought.

I don’t know whether to be mad, happy or upset – I am just very confused. I guess I can say “ovulation pain” rather than “dementors with knives” again now? Plus there’s the fact the whiplash might continue if in six weeks the cyst has disappeared without a trace. I almost begin to get that fuzzy “I’m not imagining it all!” feeling, before I begin to wonder if I imagined the whole surgery in the first place.

So things are once again painfully up in the air, but for now I am just grateful that despite my obvious doubt, Dr C listened to his gut.

A bit lost? Don’t blame you. Find the rest of the #Periodically blogs here. Or if it’s a little too TMI for you, I blog about books too here and, finally, last week’s blog can be found here.

October 25, 2017
What’s in a name? Thank you Hillary Clinton.

Like Hillary Clinton, I graduated from Swansea University in 2017, but that’s not all we have in common. We both have Welsh ancestry and we share a name, though mine is spelt properly (obviously). When it was announced that Hillary Clinton would be receiving an honorary degree from Swansea and delivering a speech, I applied for a press pass in the off-chance I might get one so early on in my career.

To my surprise, this past weekend I had the extraordinary opportunity to attend the commemoration ceremony as a member of the press. I returned to my alma mater and experienced my first *real* press room. While the site I was writing for didn’t end up using my piece (ah, freelance life!) I got to catch up with friends and colleagues still in Swansea, experience a major landmark in the university’s history and find myself in a strange void, somewhere between student journalism and the real thing. Update: my article didn’t get published on the site because it in fact got published in print! Read it here and see if you can spot the irony in the byline…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaOi3DGBAEk/

As I scrawled my not-yet-mastered shorthand during Hillary’s speech I couldn’t help but get a little nostalgic. I had graduated on the same stage just three months earlier. A stage in a hall on a campus with which I had almost no sentimental attachment. My time at Swansea was spent on Singleton Campus and I had groaned on announcement that we had to graduate on the shiny, new Bay Campus. Now however, I have a genuine memory associated with the Great Hall on Bay Campus. I got to work independently with old and new colleagues, while watching a hero deliver an important speech on children’s rights that will also give my university recognition that will undoubtedly help struggling graduates like myself.

My family have often wondered about the origin my burning advocacy for women’s rights. I have always and will always stay steadfast in saying that it comes from my mum. During Hillary Clinton’s speech however, I started to wonder if the former Secretary of State had something to do with it too. While my parents insist I’m named after a (rather depressing) Beaches character and my mother’s confidence in having ‘never met a stupid Hilary,’ I think I grew up associating my name with a very different source. One month and one day after I was born and named Hilary, the other Hillary delivered her monumental speech on women’s rights in Beijing. From then on, my name was associated with advocacy of women’s rights as human rights. While most of my friends associated my name with Hilary Duff and Hilary Swank, I think I must’ve been listening to the radio on 5 September 1995, because now I think about it, the only other Hilary I knew as a young child was Hillary Clinton. I mentioned this to my mum this afternoon and she spoke of how when she told the nurse my name the reply was ‘is that with two Ls like Hillary Rodham?’

In her speech at Swansea Hillary spoke of how things had almost come ‘full circle’ with her return to Wales, where her ancestors began. Returning to Swansea not as a student but as a professional human being (boohoo!), things felt remarkably full circle for me too. What’s more, Hillary Clinton’s speech was about the children’s rights, where she drew attention to the fact that children are not simply ‘passive observers’ of what adults are up to. She spoke mostly of sad, negative examples of where that foolish assumption shows itself, but I think I have a slightly happier example of it. I grew up with a woman fighting for the rights of women, saying things that were revolutionary at the time. Luckily for me, she happened to share my name which perhaps made me listen a little closer. Hillary Clinton is one of many empowered women that I’ve been able to look up to, but one I didn’t full appreciate until now.

So thank you Hillary Clinton, for giving me a genuine connection to Swansea University’s Bay Campus, God know’s not many Singleton students can say they have one. And thank you for saving it until after I graduated. I never expected a connection to the campus of my graduation to be conjured up after the fact, but I think you’ve given me some much needed self awareness in this period of Graduate Blues. An awareness of what my own name is starting to mean to me, an awareness of my sudden place in the professional world and an awareness of the importance and impact of role models on children. While it took me until your speech to realise it, you have undoubtedly influenced the course of my life so far, all because I was once a child paying attention to what adults were saying and doing.

Read my last blog here

October 16, 2017
What I learnt at Clue last week #Periodically 14
Nearly everyday I learn something new from the cycle tracking app Clue. Usually it’s about my own body, a new trend the app has noticed, a connection I thought was a coincidence that actually might be cycle related, or a fact that the app provides in its educational features. Last week however, I was lucky enough to make it to two of Clue’s events, as the blossoming company organised a week of talks in London.

Tuesday at Facebook London

On Tuesday evening I went to Facebook’s London HQ for a talk entitled ‘Hormones and the Cycle’ and on Wednesday I went to a ‘Lunch and Learn’ session on ‘Sex and the Cycle’. The events were brilliant and provided an opportunity to meet people from all walks of life, with one common interest – a desire to learn more about the menstrual cycle. The events were hosted by Clue’s Ambassador Program Manager, Maddie Sheesley, and its Researcher and Science & Education Manager, Anna Druet. This pair of brilliant FemTech advocates both fought the corner for how powerful education about reproductive health can be – teach a girl about her body and you can change the world.

Runway East for Lunch on Wednesday

So without further ado, here are a few things I learnt at Clue this week, that I didn’t know before.
- PMS as a concept that was coined before we even knew about hormonal fluctuations in the menstrual cycle, and yet we still use the same information to talk about and categorise it. Clue have written about the rarely discussed positive effects of PMS.
- I knew that the cervix moved throughout the cycle (as I terrifyingly discovered when I was learning how to use the menstrual cup). What I didn’t know was that it moves up and down throughout your cycle, an occurrence that can improve, or at least change, how sex can feel. What’s more, the combined pill (that’s the standard birth control pill) stops the cervix from moving up and down, it potentially lowers slightly during a placebo week. There are also reports of cervical orgasms – who knew?!
- Perhaps most interesting for me and my own health was learning that research strongly suggests that chronic pain is worse towards the end of the luteinising phase of one’s cycle – the run up to a period. I clarified at the event, was this reproductive chronic pains or all chronic pain? It is all chronic pain. So when I wrote a few weeks ago that ‘whatever the problem is, it is either worsening or being worsened by my menstrual cycle’ I was right on the money. Even if it’s my kidneys, my bladder, my bowels or elsewhere, it was always going to get worse around my period because pain tolerance goes down. Imagine how useful that knowledge would have over the last year if I’d had it. Knowledge of self is POWERFUL.
- Some research has suggested that a low risk of pregnancy can cause people to enjoy sex more – explaining potential peaks of sex drive near menstruation. I certainly know a lot of people that can attest that low risk of pregnancy is sexy.
- Very early research suggests that the clitoris grows 1/5 of its size during ovulation. That is bonkers!
- The level of Oestrogen in combined pills has been dropping over the years. Now they start low and build up if necessary.
- Each time you’re late taking the combined pill the follicle grows slightly. So if you consistently, occasionally forget to take the pill on time, it can eventually lead to ovulation. That is terrifying (but also kind of cool).
- The Progesterone Only Pill (POP/Mini-Pill) stops pregnancy by changing the consistency of your cervical fluid to block sperm. I was on the mini-pill for two years and only now do I know how it works.
- Emergency contraceptives aren’t all equally effective at every point in your cycle – also terrifying and not common knowledge.
- Most methods (or all, I’m unsure) of tracking ovulation are retrospective – we can’t yet predict when that moment is going to happen.
Interestingly, many of the questions from the audience started with ‘I recently came off the pill…’ or similar. So it’s not just something I’m imagining, there is the demand for a contraceptive shake-up. The events did remind me how valuable and life-changing hormonal contraception can be, but if you ask me, there has to be a better way. One of my favourite things about Clue is that the data you input is used in research into the menstrual cycle, so while there’s so much more to learn, at least my data is helping the cause (I hope!)

To keep up with what I’m doing, follow me on Twitter or Instagram for beautiful photos of my lunch with a side of condoms. Thanks, Clue!
October 2, 2017