Tag: diary entries

  • “Can I examine you?” #Periodically 18

    “Can I examine you?” #Periodically 18

    Covering all bases here, Happy 2018 #Periodically readers! We left off with me on Mefanamic Acid and iron tablets to help with period pain and heavy bleeding, for more details on that read: #Periodically 17. Today however, I have news, good and bad, a diagnosis and a potential solution, but it’s all rather bitter sweet.

    TW/Disclaimer: I briefly touch upon mental health in this blog and as serious as I consider discussions on mental health to be, I do approach the subject with a little bit of humour. Making light of something isn’t always mockery, sometimes it’s a brilliant coping mechanism and an even better way to banish demons – even those of the vaginal kind. 

    I was going to delve right in and give you the gossip from my gynae appointment last week, but having flicked through my December diary entries, I realise there’s a whole load of crap that needs to come before that, feel free to skip ahead. Warning, moaning ahead.

    Just over a month ago we had some snow here in Essex. It only lasted a day but for about four seconds of this particular snow day, I pulled my twenty-seven year old sister two metres across the garden in a sled. The next morning I woke with an excruciating backache. Back pain is something I’ve dealt with for years, especially when on my period, but this was something else. Assuming it was because of the spontaneous sled pulling, I dosed up on ibuprofen and took it easy. A lot of the pain was intensified to my lower back and got particularly bad at night when I was sitting or lying down, at which point it was accompanied by some delightful shooting, tugging and tearing pains across my pelvic area, front and back.

    After ten days of my moaning being even more annoying for my family than normal, I went to the doctors to check this wasn’t a womb-related pain. The delightful new doctor I had the pleasure of seeing basically laughed at me for expecting the pain to go away so quickly, and when I explained the fact that “hey, I’m in a lot of pain most of the time anyway and this is a bit much and I think I’m going to lose my mind” he did a nice, patronising head tilt and said, “so how long have you had this tummy ache?” Have you ever wanted to flick someone in the face, Rachel and Monica style?giphy (4)

    The pain was quickly accompanied by some intense nausea, which I now believe was caused by the iron tablets. I had some really disturbing nights’ sleep for a while in December, so I stopped taking them for a couple of days and immediately felt better. Since I’ve been back on them it’s been OK, so I think it was just an acclimatisation thing. When the doctor couldn’t do anything for my back my mum insisted I got a sports massage, my first since the good ol’ marathon days. I don’t actually think this helped at all, but it turns out the masseur happened to have endometriosis, PCOS and a one year-old, so it served as an enlightening therapy session, if only emotional. The backache went away while I was on my period curiously enough, it’s back now, but honestly I think I’ve gotten used to it. I am wondering if perhaps it has been caused by the fact I probably carry myself awkwardly because of the pelvic pain and it’s therefore referred elsewhere, but the fact it hasn’t healed like a normal muscle injury does leave me wondering if it is just the next phase of Project Pelvic Pain.

    So I started 2018 with my two favourite things; a period and a visit to the gynaecologist – yahoo, lucky me! Going into the appointment I had two things in mind: a) I hope its a female gynae and b) I think I’m going to come out with a prescription for the pill. Well the gynae was a man so that was an excellent start. I’ve never been bothered about having a male doctor for “intimate” situations, it’s more that in Swansea Dr M asked me what was wrong and then interrupted me every time I spoke – all that resulted in was fruitless surgery and a dodgy belly button. I wanted things to be different this time. Unfortunately, things started the same way. He asked me what my symptoms were and the moment I opened my mouth he just started talking over me and before I knew it he was saying, “so we need to get some hormones in you” and I just said “NO.” Happily, he shut up and listened while I explained that this was no longer just a situation of bad period pain. I told him that the pain and the repercussions of it were creeping in my life in serious and unwelcome ways and he finally said the words I’ve always wanted to hear: “can I examine you?” For avid #Periodically readers, you’ll know this is a momentous moment. Read: Why didn’t the gynae look at my vagina? to see why.

    This was horribly awkward because I was on my period but also because the chaperone, who is there to make me feel comfortable, got waaaay too close while I was changing. But it turns out, the exam was uncomfortable for another reason.

    Reclothed and a little lubey, I sat back down at his desk and he immediately said “OK you have a superficial problem too, it’s not just your internal system”. I didn’t even care what it was at this point, I just wanted to cry about the fact that all it took was a 30 second exam for someone to finally be like “oh yeah, there’s a problem”. He went on to explain that some of my pain, specifically my dyspareunia (pain during sex) is being caused by the uncontrolled clenching of my vagina upon penetration. Yep, I just wrote that #sharingiscaring. This has a name, vaginismus, sexy right? So he starts listing the treatments for vaginismus; “definitely counselling, probably physio and possibly anti-depressants”. I should have been fairly concerned at this point, but instead, my mind immediately went to Charlotte in Sex and the City… 

    I’m not surprised, given the difficulty of pelvic examinations in the past, but I am not exactly comforted by this diagnosis as my dyspareunia is described as deep dyspareunia, meaning the pain I experience is more internal than my vagina, it is “deep”. To me it feels a bit like a chicken or the egg situation. Did I always have vaginismus, or did I get vaginismus because my vagina is like “wow don’t go in there, it’s a mess”. My instinct is the latter, but I guess we’ll find out in therapy! My gynae’s referred solutions have to be arranged by my GP and so it’s probably going to take a while, but this feels like progress, albeit it disheartening, worrying and a little sad.

    The other result of the gynae appointment was that I now have, as predicted, a pill prescription. I expressed all my concerns, and other doctors’ concerns regarding DVT and breast cancer, but the gynae was confident that going on the pill will not only help with my symptoms, but that it has the potential to cure them. We also had a discussion about what pill I am *happy* to go on. It could of course be that if I come off the pill in two years everything will come back, and it could also being that going on the pill will do sod all to help me, but at this point it’s worth a shot. I won’t be starting the pill for a few weeks, so I’ll write a blog soon about my thoughts and feelings about going back on – as you can imagine, there are a lot.

    Sorry this was a long one, but me and my depressed vagina needed some processing time before writing this. There’ll be more, but in the mean time I’m going to go and learn a little more about vaginismus, how I feel about going back on the pill and maybe I’ll even re-read Naomi Wolf’s chapter about the Vagina-Brain connection – I feel like I’m going to need it more than ever.

    How are we feeling about the new #Periodically picture? Yay, nay?

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  • Articulating Pain #Periodically 11

    Articulating Pain #Periodically 11

    I think I have always been quite a moany person. When I was little I would moan about going to summer camp or after school club. As I got older I moaned about maths and music lessons. Then I started moaning about redundant news stories in prime time spots, the patriarchy and inequality, Brexit, tuition fees. Last week I was moaning about how annoying people were for moaning about Big Ben going quiet.

    I’ve also, from time to time, moaned about pain. I remember following my mum around the supermarket when I was eleven or so, complaining about a dull achey back ache. I moaned about the same pain when I started my period a few years later. I moaned about it even more when I started working at pizza delivery chains and the pain would present itself after an hour or so of a five hour standing shift.

    I have a family full of aches and pains. Moaning about back ache or knee pain is pretty normal business for us. Remarkably, given I have two older sisters, moaning about period pain wasn’t much of a thing in our house (until I hit puberty, that is). I remember texting my mum under the desk in French class the day after I started my period saying ‘I think I have period pain’ and she said ‘try to move around’. An answer I found very unhelpful at the beginning of double French.

    My friends say I moaned about my periods at sixth form. I can’t say I remember that – but it does sound like me. When I started university I was having monthly periods for the first time because of the pill, and that definitely made me more aware of my periods and the pain that accompanied them. I remember paracetamol, hot water bottles and bean bags becoming monthly essentials.

    Then of course I stopped having periods. I won’t go into that again. For the ‘fun’ of that adventure read A Tale of Two Pills.

    Fast forward a year and a half and I’m in Clermont-Ferrand, France. I’ve been off of the pill for three weeks and my boobs suddenly hurt. I moan about it and my parents and, quite rightly, tell me they don’t care. A week later I have my menarche 2.0. A week of tender breasts before my period starts is now a thing. It was never a thing before I was on the pill.

    This very second, I am using Clue and my old diaries to trace when exactly the pain got noteworthy. I had three periods that seemingly passed as nonevents and then we get to January 2015. After a 63 days cycle my period promptly started in a crêperie in Lyon three hours after a friend from home had arrived to visit. Two days later, I got up and began my long commute into the Rhône-Alps countryside and started to feel sick from some sort of new period pain. When I arrived at work I taught one class and then vomited in the toilet before going home – I never take sick days. Actually I’ll just quote my diary here, I think 2016 Hilary was quite eloquent about it:

    ‘I’m finally having a period but once I got to school I felt so faint and sick and there was basically blood pouring out of me. It was horrible. Very strange day, David Bowie died.’

    My next period, seven weeks later, appears in my diary as a divine event. It is the day I wrote a certain blood/vagina quote as discussed in Blood, Books and Vagina. I also wrote:

    ‘The more I learn about vaginas, periods, childbirth and motherhood the more my curiosity grows.’ 

    I was clearly on some sort of (hormone induced?) vagina trip. Though if you’ve read Blood, Books and Vagina you’ll know I had just read Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography. 

    Right, so now we’re in March 2016. Once again I’ll leave it to past me (and Shania Twain, apparently):

    ‘Man, I feel like woman! Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I came on my period 28 days after my last period! Everything about this period is different but familiar… Today I feel like total shit and I cannot stop eating, but I know why and for the first time in three years I feel like me and my body are on the same page, yipee!’

    Oh young, naive girl. I don’t know where I got the idea that this was the dawn of a new age because this next cycle would go on to be 44 days, and the following would be 47. What is consistent on my Clue though, is the increase in cramps and ovulation pain. Around this time paracetamol stopped hacking it and I moved onto ibuprofen. Like sore boobs, ovulation pain was not something I experienced before I went on the pill. I have, until now, categorised it as sharp, often breathtaking pain, towards one side below my belly button, usually the right side.

    Once I started having sex again, the occurrence of these pains was no longer limited to where I was in my cycle. Suddenly I was having ovulation pain and period cramps three out of four weeks of a cycle, and recently four out of four (or five out of five). This includes weeks and months where I deliberately stop having sex, the pain continues regardless of my sex life, but is definitely worse when it’s active.

    Yet, it now seems that those pains are not ‘period cramps’ or ‘ovulation pain’. After last week’s ruling that whatever is causing my pain it is not gynaecological, I am stumped for how exactly I now talk about my pain. One option is to shut up and not say anything, quit a lifetime habit of moaning and leave my friends and family in peace. One thing that I’m learning to be really difficult about pain, especially chronic pain disorders, which it now seems is a group I may belong to, is that if you don’t say anything nothing happens. The only way anyone is going to know something is wrong is if you say something aloud.

    There is nothing, bar a heavy period and a bit of bloating, that projects my pain into the physical world. Which means everyone is going to think you’re fine unless you moan, but if you moan all the time then it’s fucking annoying for everyone. But how else do you express that you’re unwell? I need a metaphysical censor above my head. It’s a concept I find really tricky to get my head around.

    Now though, the language I have been using to express that pain is redundant and incorrect. I have focussed so much on my pain-cycle connection that it is incredibly difficult to disassociate my pain from my menstrual cycle. However, the raving pedantic within me can’t get on board with using now incorrect terms. I daren’t start saying ‘ow my bladder hurts’ because in a year’s time we’ll have probably moved onto my bowel or something else. It does of course all come under the category of pelvic pain but there’s something very clinical about ‘ow my pelvic area hurts’.

    I need to find a new language for articulating this pain – any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. So far all I have is Twilight Saga’s Jane blank staring while whispering ‘pain’.

    pain

    In the meantime, I might channel 2016 diary Hilary’s bizzaro way of articulating pain – with utter nonsense and writing a novel…

    Update: since I wrote this my sister showed me this picture. Could this be the language I’ve been needing to moan about my pain?! dementors

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