...goodness. Has it really been so long since my last blog post? Apparently. It's been an interesting, if emotionally and physically very difficult, time.
The one thing that never seems to change is still my periods. This one made me wait 5 weeks until its arrival. I felt drained for a week before, at least. Constant aches all over; it felt like pure ache had been injected into the bones. Insomnia returned, my appetite left and I was a useless hobbling, waddling berk. The period pains were present, as they always seem to be, days before it actually started, which was Friday last week. So this is day 7. Keral is OK. Tranexamic acid definitely helps. It's reduced the total bleeding time from 10 days to 7 or 8, which can only be a good thing. But the pain is still awful and so, I still have to have co-dydramol and for various complicated reasons, I can not keep taking it. I can't do it anymore. I can't explain to you how terrible I feel as I type this, how emotional and unwell I am and how desperately I want my life to not be this way.
I'm so eager to book my next longed for driving lesson but I can't yet, not until I feel OK. Being in charge of a ton of metal in vehicle form is not a sensible act when one is not in full control, or mentally "on it". Since the 8th January this year, I have not had a properly good day. I reiterate what I've said before: I'm not looking for sympathy or pity with this blog. I never want it, it does no good.
But the fact remains that because of my own body seemingly fighting itself, I'm so tired and I hurt a lot of the time. I don't sleep well. I don't eat well (lately). And please know that I adore food. I love food. Losing weight is not something I try to do. Ever. Today my appetite has not been sensed in any great way. I want food! And yet, I don't.
I had an appointment at hospital yesterday for an ultrasound scan. If you've never had one, I don't know how to prepare you for the unforgivable advice you'll likely be given: drink about 2 pints of water and don't pass any urine until after your scan.
It's simple advice, easy to follow, admittedly. (My appointment was at 2pm but I wasn't seen until 2:15pm, which, to me, is not acceptable. It's a fairly widely known fact that holding it in, is not good for you. I know they're busy and the like but with something like that where you have an almost impossible urge and real pain because you need to GO, NOW, I think the appointment should be at the time stated and made by them. I kept my side of the deal. I think they should've kept theirs. If you've followed their advice, you'll be needing to go at least 30 minutes before your intended appointment time. The fact that that appointment was 3 months late and the wrong information "in the system" is pretty rubbish, as well. It was meant to be made 3 months ago to check the Mirena was in the right place; I had to go to a different hospital because the original appointment took so long. Not even I expected to wait this long. Anyway...) According to the trainee sonographer and her superior, all seems fine with my womb and ovaries, or at least as fine as they can be, considering. The cysts have reduced in size: no longer a whopping 5 x 4 x 3cms.
Of course, I still have pains in the ovary area, on my right. I still experience pelvic pain between periods, i.e. now. I still need to take some kind of pain relief for this unexplained pain. Once again, everything seems bleak, so difficult to improve this. I feel it's so hard to change because I know that in a few weeks, I'll be back to PeriodLand: being cared for by my Mum (who can do without all this but, because she is amazing, helps me, still.) because I can not walk or talk or look after myself properly. Because of a period. I'll be in bed or on the sofa for a few days, not dressed, not coherent, not able to get by without taking 4 different kinds of tablets throughout the 3 or 4 worst days.
Again, Twitter and facebook have been my sources of social interaction, continually. The people I "know" through it have been my constant companions. I've been talking to people I still have not met, but to whom I still very much enjoy talking. They've kept my mind off feeling unwell with talk of newly hatched robins, soon-to-be-released books, tours, travel and freelance journalism work. They've kept my mind from wandering to places it shouldn't go, the negative and fields of self-pity. They've kept me laughing and made me speechless - literally - in one instance. They've kept me thinking, asking, playing Bejeweled Blitz.
I see things and people I want but can't have (and to whom I can't get the words out), places I want to visit but can't get to. I want to leave my home and go, somewhere, to stay on someone's sofa, in a spare room, in a tent in a field in Yorkshire, anywhere, to try to forget what has happened and what is happening to me and my family this year. But I know wherever I go, all the pain and trouble will still be within me and there is nothing, it seems, that I can do to stop it. And right now, as I type... I don't know what to do.
