Saturday 22 February 2014

The Reappearance of Lady Scarfacts


If I were to attempt to blow away the dust and cobwebs from this blog and the path I took to get to it, I could well sneeze for a week, so I shan't do it. I shall simply type and publish and hope no-one notices how terribly I've neglected this place.

Good reasons exist as to why it's been so long since my last blog post; the morphine I have to take each day for the pains is still not conducive to energetic activity or prolonged concentration, and, of course, the ever-present fatigue is rampant. Not rampant, as such, but still there. Here. It's still with me is what I mean. Anyway... Groggy and heavy-eyed, I've thought every day of blogging and telling you about how my pains are, or how the most recent treatment(s) have been affecting me. Alas... I have not.

Last year, on the early-August morning of the day after the nth (actually, the third) operation I underwent to (hopefully) stop my periods *scoffs* and to remove the pesky right ovary, I managed to sit in the comfortable chair beside my hospital bed and scribble down my thoughts for a blog post I would type and publish in the next week or so. Hm. That didn't happen. I did, though, post a wordy-picturey-appy photo of one of my newest scars not too many days after the operation but it wasn't a "proper" blog post, nor do I consider the post, Home, a proper post. But I still have the scribbles! And here they are, just for you, dear reader:


Wednesday 7th August 2013

From what I could gather, I was at least fifty years younger than the four other women on my ward. The only people I talked to while I was in there were the nurses, and most of them were younger than me, which is a strange kind of feeling because I still feel as if I'm in my early twenties, not early thirties. All of the nurses were delightful, with the patience of every saint that may ever have lived. All that patience, all that selflessness, all that kindness. So much of each. And each nurse who helped and tended and literally supported me was full of pure lovely.

I wrote a note stating my solid respect for and appreciation of each of them. On my ladies-only ward was at least one elderly patient with a kind of dementia, and another who was exceptionally cantankerous and demanding, to the point where I felt evermore-compelled to throw a pillow across the room, aiming quite precisely for her head. Shortly before I left my temporary residence in a suspensionless-but-free-to-use-and-pushed-by-my-SuperMum wheelchair, for I was NOT about to attempt to walk the roughly-450-metre distance to the car to go home, I handed the note to one of the nurses. She read it and smiled, and said, "Aww, thank-you. That's really lovely of you, I'll show it to the other girls", which she did, just after. I can not praise those women more with mere words, as wonderful as words are. I felt so safe, so calm about being there, and so confident in their abilities.

As I wrote these notes at lunchtime on Wednesday to pass the time and capture on paper my feelings at the time, Scott Walker was serenading me with tales of Jackie, after The Clash set up a White Riot, and Edward Elgar's Nimrod made my heart swell, as it does every time I hear it. My Puzzler Pocket Crossword Collection book thing saw some inky action while I was in hospital but Sherlock Holmes and his doctor chum remained untouched, sadly.


And there my scribblings finished because Mother Ma arrived and gathered up my bits and pieces, and then we went home. And I recovered, and took things slowly and easily, and tried not to feel guilty about being unable to help with housework and the cats and the garden and so much more. The scars are now pinkish-purplish, with the right-side one still being ever so slightly sensitive and sore at times, and was also the one which seemed to want to keep the stitches in longer than I preferred. Crucially, I am right-ovary-free. Hoorah!

The outwardly-normal-looking right ovary, which I'd said, umpteen times, was definitely making me ill and was the cause for the atrocious pains on my right side was dissected and analysed and was found to be fairly well packed full of endometrial cysts and bits and stuff. Yes, I was unsurprised, too. At my follow-up appointment six weeks later, I did just happen to mention to my consultant that, "I don't have too much pride to say, "I told you so"...", to which he replied, "Yes. Yes, you did tell us so..." and I tried as hard as I could to suppress my smug-but-devastated face. All that time. All those YEARS of AGONY because of a tiny defective egg bag, which "appeared" to be "normal" *retches* but which was utterly knackered beyond repair. Because "it looked normal" on the outside. Lessons must be learned! Surely, they must. I like to think my consultant has learned from me, The Awkward One. Ever awkward.


In January, I saw him again. I told him that, precisely as I feared, aside from the continuing pelvic pains, my periods are getting worse, heavier, more painful, after Novasure. They are doing what I unequivocally knew they would, what they always do - they're reverting to their terrifying and physically- and emotionally-exhausting "natural" ways. So, there's another treatment which hasn't worked and, in my next blog post, I'll tell you the outcome of that New Year appointment, right in time for Endometriosis Awareness Week. My timing is nothing if not late. And slightly impeccable.





(Images courtesy of ManicXMiner, AIGA Design Archive, and Kaye Sedgwick for Endometriosis UK, respectively.

Subscribe to the RSS feed