Tag: dysmenorrhea

  • Gynaecological Whiplash #Periodically 15

    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.

    wth

  • Subtle signs that my repro health ain’t healthy #Periodically 3

    Subtle signs that my repro health ain’t healthy #Periodically 3

    Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, specifically the app Clue, I have every cycle that I’ve had in the last three and a half years tracked with excessive detail. But hang on, the maths doesn’t quite add up… three years is 42 months… and I’ve only had 18 cycles… right well there’s warning sign number one – irregular periods. Throughout this blog I’ll illustrate a couple of points with information from my Clue which is almost definitely a gross overshare but hey, here we go.

    Remarkably, my quest for treatment began during the last year where I have, for the first time ever, had a natural and regular cycle. But, with my period finally having regulated to a monthly cycle, it made all the symptoms I had been experiencing over a long period of time, condense into a month. Highlighting their severity and increasing their impact.

    Acne is the most obvious, but my sisters and my mother have/had normal cycles and acne long into adulthood. It was only once I became very aware of horrible chin acne during the same point in every cycle that I noticed it was, at least, hormonal acne.

    Painful and heavy periods have gone hand in hand since menarche (my first period). The more pain I’m in then the heavier I tend to be bleeding. This, has over the years, often resulted in at least two days of doubling up tampons with sanitary pads, frequent changes and dozens of destroyed pyjamas and bedsheets… (I’m still waiting for that TMI filter to kick in). This has become easier to manage with a menstrual cup, if only it could cure the pain too – so far, only ibuprofen can do that. One thing that put me off seeking advice was that I was ‘running’ a lot and irregular periods and even amenorrhea (disappearance of periods) can be caused by frequent exercise, especially running. However, when I say ‘run’ I mean a light jog that usually turns into a long walk and I think it is highly unlikely that my shoddy exercise habits had anything to do with anything. Here you can see how my cramps and painkiller use have increased over time.

    Ovulation pain is something I’ve only experienced during the last ten months or so, but while it seems to be somewhere in the vicinity of my ovaries it isn’t as strict time wise. It now is a pain I experience three out of four weeks of my cycle, particularly when I step on my right leg.

    IMG_5556
    An indication that my ovulatory pain must be something more sinister was that I couldn’t be ovulating this often…

    Random cramping, leg pain and fatigue are a few new dramas to deal with three out of four weeks of my cycle, particularly if I run. The leg pain is particularly strange as it is a bit like growing pains but in my upper thighs. Over the last four months in particular, lethargy has begun to accompany pain – though whether I’m tired because I’m in pain or whether the fatigue is coming from somewhere else, I do not know. I am a pretty lethargic person anyway so it’s taken a big move in my energy levels for me to notice.

    Back pain is something I’ve dealt with since I was about eleven and I actually think might have been the earliest sign. I remember my mum taking me to the doctors and chiropractors to try and ease this dull achey pain in my lower back, particularly when standing for a long time, but nothing ever worked. When I started my period four years later, it was weird to find that this pain that had plagued me for so long, was now part of my period pain every ‘month’.

    There are a few other things, some that I’ve discussed in my last blog like pain during sex and constipation before my period and after sex, and some that I’ve only experienced rarely or recently like occasional bleeding during/after sex and spotting. 

    Thanks for sticking with #Periodically thus far. I’m excited, now that I’ve got all the depressing symptoms and nitty gritty details out of the way, I can really delve in and write about what happens now and why more attention needs to be paid to reproductive and sexual health.