It’s always something around here!

In ten short days, I’m scheduled to go ‘under the knife.’ Actually, that’s not quite true.  It’s more accurate to say that I’ll be subjected to a lighted camera inserted into my belly.  (that sounds better, now, doesn’t it?)  Why, you ask?  Long story short: we’ve run through the gamut of all other non-surgical tests to find out what has been plaguing me since March.  It started out small, but since then has been progressively getting worse.   Because of the nature of this problem, I’m not exactly excited to share it with everyone I know, so I’ll do my best to be discreet.

Back in March, I had a back attack, for lack of a better term, that you can read about it by clicking here.   Honestly, that’s a much funnier post than this one, so if you want to just skip over to that, you won’t hurt my feelings.   In any case, in the midst of my back “problem,” I also began to have lower abdominal pain.   Since I was in a tizzied frenzy of “see every doctor you can possibly think of to chip away at the deductible,”  I had a visit with my midwife, who assured me everything checked out.   But the discomfort didn’t go away; it only got a bit worse.  More of a nag at this point, though.

At the end of April, I had new and additionally annoying symptoms that prompted my doctor to order an endometrial biopsy and specialized ultrasound.  Any time a doctor orders tests to rule out cancer, it goes to another level.  Thankfully, those tests all came back clear.   They did find one abnormality that could easily be rectified by a simple procedure, but the doc decided to wait and see if it went away on its own.  This was the time when I began having pain every day and have since.

After two more ultrasounds, we found that the problem found earlier had in fact dissipated all by itself, which was an answer to our prayers.  The doc assured me–in ten words or less–that my pain should be “all gone,” and I should be back to normal.   That was not the case, however.   I decided that this doc and I had come to the end of our relationship; not so much that I didn’t trust him, but I just couldn’t talk to him.   I felt like he blew off my complaints of pain.  When I got a copy of my records later on,  it was only mentioned once in my charts even though I’d seen him four or five times in the past three months.  (**disclaimer: I still believe this doc is great for certain things, and throughout our relationship he has helped me tremendously, but in this situation, I felt we needed to go our separate ways)

From then on, a ping pong game with doctors began.  I saw a new practitioner who took my complaints seriously and did a thorough workup, including a new ultrasound.  All tests were normal. She sent me to my primary care doctor, who also took my reports of pain seriously and ordered a CT scan to rule out problems different in nature from the docs I’d seen previously.   We were all grateful when the CT scan report was clean. This doctor sent me back to the OB/GYN to see what was next.

While this was all good–no, fantastic!–news, it still left us with unanswered questions.  Why was I still in pain, every day?  Some days were better than others,  and I would range from grouchy mama to “I’d like to rip my insides out now, thank you very much!”  This is not something I made public, but sheesh, how would I?   Blogging about it is bad enough.

Todd and I saw one more doctor in the same new practice that we moved to, who suggested I have laparoscopy done.  From the symptoms I detailed to her, she thought there was a strong possibility that I have endometriosis.   All the other tests that I had had up until then do not normally diagnose it, and the “gold standard,” from all my reading, is the lap surgery.   My mom suffered from endo for years, and we knew that it runs in families.   The next question was when to do it.  Even though it’s considered minor surgery, my schedule earlier this fall didn’t exactly allow for even a day or two off.  Between homeschooling, running a house, and childbirth classes, surgery just didn’t seem to fit in.   But now, the date is finally upon me.   On November 9,  I’m scheduled to have the procedure done, first of all to diagnose or rule out endometriosis and if the doctor finds some, to hopefully remove it and alleviate the almost constant, and ever-intensifying pain.  For a description of a laparoscopy, click here.  I think my family is really looking forward to it:  I’ve been a bear to live with lately and it’s not getting any better.  If they had their way, I’m thinking they feel they could probably go ahead and do the procedure themselves!  In that regard, it’s good that the surgery is close.  I don’t like lashing out at others because of my circumstances.  There are a few parts I’m not looking forward to, however.  I’m deathly afraid of IVs (I can have babies naturally without any meds, but have accepted lidocaine in my hand so they could put an IV in before the birth! What’s wrong with that picture?!), and I’m not all that excited to have my belly filled with CO2 gas, to be honest.  But if the benefits outweigh the risks, I’m ready to feel better and have pain-free days.

If you think of me over the next two weeks, please pray that everything goes well on the day of my surgery, and if endometriosis is the cause of my chronic pain, the surgeon will see it and identify it readily, as well as be able to remove the offending tissue.   And perhaps most importantly, pray for my family between now and November 9… that they might be able to suffer through my grumpiness and survive!

Hopefully, I’ll be quick  to recover.    The doctor told us that if I can manage to do absolutely  nothing between the day of the surgery (a Wednesday) and the rest of the week, I should be able to return to normal activities by Monday.  Woot, woot.  I have ten days to figure out how to do ‘absolutely nothing.’