Pain, E.R. Cysts, and Tumors, Oh My!

It is still dark out because when I open my eyes there is no light that I can see. It must be early in the morning, sometime before 5am.

I cringe and try to roll over to see if changing position will help alleviate the pain I feel. I adjust my pillow careful not to wake my hubby sleeping next to me. It's a work day for him and he needs every bit of sleep.

This weekend thanks to my early morning wake up calls he hasn't been getting to much sleep.

I lie awake in the silence waiting to see if this helps at all. I feel the sharp pain still in my lower left abdomen, the same pain that has been my wake up call for the last three days. I know if I don't take something soon, the pain will only grow and get much worse.

So I quietly reach out in the darkness to my end table on the right and feel blindly around for my all too familiar bottle of pain meds. I find them and carefully twist off the lid and tilt the bottle downward til I feel a pill fall into my hand. I make sure that there is only one and put the lid back on and set it back down on the table. I grab the glass of water that has been my constant companion for days and place the pill on my tongue before drinking the water. With any luck in about 30 minutes I should be pain free again.

This is the new normal part of my life. It had begun shortly after the birth of my second daughter, Kailee, where my monthly cycle became something to dread and countdown for each month. I had to know when they would come to make sure I was fully prepared to handle all that came with it.

Many women know what I am referring to, the dreaded period that comes to all women unless you have had a hysterectomy or yours are the dreaded curse each month. Mine comes with a vengeful curse, so I must carry a good supply of pain meds and a heat pack that I can microwave in about 2 minutes to get me through the tough 3 days each month.

However as I have gotten older, it comes every 3 weeks and those 3 days are days I spend curled up in a fetal position somewhere and cross my fingers they occur on a weekend where I can have hubby to help me. They are that bad. On a scale of 1-10, they are an 11 hands down.

However these pains were more severe and lasted way past my period. Still it isn't unheard of for me to feel my body going through ovulation since I was diagnosed three years ago with ovarian cysts on both of my ovaries so I can tell what my body is doing most days. Lucky me!

Still something wasn't quite right this time as I lay in bed cringing at the pain that is growing and isn't getting any better. It feels like I am being stabbed with a rusty, tin can against my will. This has become my routine now for 4 days. It began on Friday morning, when I could barely walk because of the pain and began to lose count of the number of Advil I had taken to combat the pain in my ab.

So after dropping the kids off for school that morning, I grabbed a heat pack and some Vicodin ES and laid on the couch. Oh how I wanted to call my hubby home to help, but realized how many upcoming projects he was slated to manage plus an onsite call in Los Angeles today. Just not a good day.

Thankfully when he called to see how I was, he could tell that if I was taking Vicodin, it wasn't going well at all and he made arrangements to come home. That is where it began. By the time he arrived home on Friday, with the heat and pain meds kicking in, I was feeling pretty good. So I slept most of the afternoon only to awaken four hours later with that familiar twinge of pain again, so I grabbed another Vicodin before it got too bad.

Steve and I talked about our options that day, doctors office wouldn't be able to do much since so many tests would need to be done before we had any answers, urgent care, same thing, and ER would result in a very long wait. So we opted to wait out the weekend and see how things looked on Monday.

So here I sit Monday morning in the dark, with tears streaming down my face, trying so hard not to let my hubby know how bad the pain is, when you want to scream at the top of your lungs because of the pain, but it won't do anything. So I wait, alone in the dark, wishing I could close my eyes like Steve and just fall back to sleep.

I can tell as the light begins to fall across our windows that morning is coming and of course, within minutes Steve's alarm goes off. I resolve to keep the kids home from school and head into the ER today to find an answer once and for all. As Steve watches me reach for more pain pills, he asks how bad is it?

I tell him it's worse than Friday and that I had already taken a pain pill but that it isn't helping. He insists he isn't going in to work but will take me to the doctors. Again we agree that since the pain is so bad, we will risk the long drawn out wait at the ER.

We tell our kids what is going on, and they happily agree to go back to bed since they aren't going to school that day. We head off to our ER and run the risk of the flu while going. I make sure I have plenty of antibacterial hand wash.

Good news the ER is pretty empty only one person there and she is called while we finish our paperwork. To make a long story short at this point, I find out nothing more than I knew 3 years ago. I still have cysts on my ovaries with the largest being on my left, which is where doctors think the pain is coming from.

I also have fibroid tumors on my uterius which could also be causing the pain. Diagnosis? Call my OB-GYN and follow up. I have more pain meds to take until I get that appointment and then I am discharged. Have a nice day!

At this point, I am still waiting to make a call to my OB-GYN because their phone lines have been busy all morning long. Bad news: pain meds are only for 20 pills and I have already taken 7 in the last two days. No refills.

So I wait and I cross my fingers that someone, somewhere can give me the answers I seek and finally get me some pain relief. So my dearest readers, that is where I have been since last week Friday. Laid up in bed, sick from all the pain meds, since they make me nauseated, and regulated by a clock to faithfully take them every 4-6 hours or be in pain so severe, I can't quite describe it.

Please pray for me, pray for pain relief at this point, so I can rest enough to allow my body to get well and heal. I love you all so faithfully!