January 31st, 2019 - Surgery Day

Sitting in a hotel in Tempe, Arizona this evening waiting on my husband to get back with dinner. I have to travel to see my pelvic pain specialist, as you probably know by now. I am nearing the end of my three day stay here to have my second laparoscopic surgery with this doctor.

We were hoping this would be the start of figuring out my health decline. In addition to pelvic pain, I have debilitating migraines and what we think are symptoms of fibromyalgia. This is the beginning to answers and to healing that hopefully brings me a longer spell of good health. 

I'm going to rewind to the beginning to December here (soon, i'd like to rapid rewind to document my female health journey). I had another follow up with Dr. Desai to discuss my worsening pain. She gave me two options. The first was pain management and physical therapy. The pain started when I was still quite active, running and walking on the treadmill as often as I could and also doing stretching and core strengthening. All of those things were tools given to my by my previous go with pelvic floor physical therapy. They helped for quite a while, but the pain still persisted. The second option was surgery. I expressed that I really did not want to go another round under the knife, but in my gut, I knew this was probably the best choice.

I had my 9th surgery for "women's issues" this afternoon. I was nervous going in, but I focused on the kindness of all the doctors, nurses and staff. They were truly compassionate and caring. They made me feel so comfortable, despite the circumstances of our acquaintance.

Post-op, my husband received a report and photos from my doctor. They found the smallest bit of endometriosis and excised it. Endometriosis is one of those weird diseases where, although there is a list of specific symptoms, the pain involved is on such a wide scale and differs greatly from person to person. One may have many, large endo lesions and experience little to no pain at all. The other side of that scale is someone like me that tends to have small lesions that cause immense pain and other painful symptoms. My endo also likes to mess with my nerves and muscles, sending then into spasms and transmitting pain signals though my body. That's why things like driving are really difficult for me. I never quite know when spasms will start or how long they'll last or the kind of pain they'll bring. I have been laying in bed, relaxing and my lower back will spasm so bad that it will bring tears to my eyes. I can also be walking or holding something and a spasm will make me trip to drop what's in my hands. 

The other surgery find was, indeed, adhesions (scar tissue). This is the first surgery where my scar tissue was not removed. It was in an area where my ovary used to be and sort of made itself into a bolster holding things in place. If it was removed, it would likely do more harm, such as allowing blood to fill that empty cavity. 

So far, the best part of this stop in my health journey has been the pain management team at the hospital. This involved three lovely women, two doctors and a student, that openly talked about pain management, making the taboos of this topic completely nonexistent. I think if more doctors treated their chronic pain patients like this, there would be so many more happy people the world. They gave us an idea of where to go next, which was so very much more than my primary care doctor has done in the last year.

All in all, I'm confident I can keep moving forward. It may be a slow start, or even another long journey, but I know I can navigate it and come out on top, the place I like to be.