Verses to Remember

From birth I have relied on you; You brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise you.

Psalm 71:6



Saturday, February 6, 2010

So now I know.

**As a favor to my male readers, since there's so many of you :) I'd like to warn you that this might be one post you'd like to skip, or just scan for the highlights. That is because I am going to be talking about "girl-things"- most of which you probably won't appreciate since you are, of course, not girls. (Yes, Sweetie, you can skip it too! :) Of course if you do choose to read it, that's wonderful and I'm happy to have you. Just don't say I didn't warn ya!**

Alrighty then.

Now that I feel I've been fair to the two or three men who might actually read my blog (and that's including my wonderful hubs and my dear old dad), I can get down to business. The reason I have not written anything for over a week now is that I have been prepping for, and then hosting, a visit from a long-awaited friend.

Well, maybe friend isn't the right word... and while long-awaited (which in case you are wondering, means to "wait with expectation") is technically accurate, the word dread (meaning to "anticipate with horror") might be a more accurate description. Yes, if you haven't guessed it by now, I'm talking about Flo. The once-monthly "friend" that all us humans blessed with ovaries "await." Or "dread."

It doesn't really matter how we feel about her, she's going to come whenever she darn well pleases. And not only is her timing often, shall we say, inconvenient, she of course brings along all of her baggage; including shortened fuses, water-retention, muscle-spasms, hyper-sensitivity and the most fun of all, hormonally-charged mood swings. I do believe that most, if not all of the fairer sex's bad press has been due to this little visitor. If it wasn't for her and her "gifts," women would not get the bad rap that we do!

And even though she makes us uncomfortable, irritable, weepy and irrational, there are still times when we're happy to see that's she's finally arrived... in town. This is what has happened in my house this week.

Now let me give some background. I am currently 29 years old. When I was 17 I began having horrible headaches. They started becoming more and more frequent, made me miss a lot of school, and eventually I had a headache all the time. I started seeing lots of doctors who tried lots of treatments, and lots of medications. One of the treatments was to put me on birth control pills to try to regulate my hormones. This seemed to help a small amount, so I stayed on them.

Off I went to college, still fighting the headaches and still on the birth control pills. At the end of my sophomore year I started having stomach cramps, which quickly progressed to severe abdominal cramping and spasms. Off I went to the ER where they suspected appendicitis but soon found a grapefruit-sized cyst (mass) in one of my ovaries. Off to surgery, where they discovered that the cyst was a borderline ovarian cancer growth in my right ovary.

Not what I was hoping for. However, the doctor on call in the ER that night for gynecology turned out to be an amazing woman and an amazing surgeon and she was able to remove the cyst from the ovary, whole, as well as leave the ovary itself in tact.

This was remarkable because 1. most surgeons would simply remove the ovary as well as the cyst in order to be safe and be sure of getting all the cancer, and 2. removing the cyst in tact prevented the cancer cells from being able to spread, which saved me from having to do further treatment such as radiation or chemo. All in favor, say aye!

So I did not have to have any further cancer treatment, but to prevent me from forming another cyst, they immediately recommended I be put on birth control pills. Since I was already on them, they played around with dosing and options and told me to not stop taking them for any reason other than actively trying to start our family (after which they told me I'd need to have a total hysterectomy). There is much more to this story, including another cyst removal 5 years later, but suffice it to say I have been on birth control pills ever since.

However birth control pills have this funny way of also preventing... birth. Or, more specifically, pregnancy. And since my husband and I have decided we want to try to get pregnant, being on the pill would definitely need to change! So I met with my Ob-Gyn and stopped taking it at the first of this year. Because I'd been on it for so long, I really did not know how stopping it was going to affect me. When you have been on birth control pills for more than a few years, it can take quite a while for your body to regulate itself into having a normal cycle again once you stop taking them.

Suffice it to say, Flo's vacation plans can get pretty messed up!

And of course when you are on the pill for reasons other than preventing pregnancy, you have those factors to deal with as well when you do stop taking it. In my case that meant that I had no idea what effect stopping it would have on my headaches, the formation of cysts, or having a regular cycle. Because of all these unknowns, I have been carefully watching to see how my body will react to the new hormone-free me. And I certainly learned a few things!

My headaches were pretty normal for the first 2-3 weeks after quitting the pill, but after that I started noticing that I was having more painful and more consistent headaches... day after day. They continued to worsen until I started to wonder if this was how my life was going to be now that I was off the pill. Needless to say I was not really thrilled with that idea.

Then, one day last week I woke up and realized that my headache was not nearly as intense as it was when I went to bed. And, as my husband and mother had been predicting (hmmm wonder how they knew?!), I began to wonder if the change might mean I was about to receive a visit. Sure enough, by lunchtime, my visitor had arrived; and this was one time I was actually happy to host her.

Not only was this good news because it meant my worsening headaches were a temporary thing, it was also good because a regular cycle is one of the first steps to accurately predicting and recognizing ovulation, which makes things a lot easier when you are trying to conceive!

So now I know what I can expect, and how my body is reacting to the new system. It may not be the most fun of changes, but at least I know. And now you, my faithful readers, also know what to expect; in that if you don't hear from me for a few days, or my musings seem particularly cynical or cryptic... I am probably experiencing my new tell-tale warning system, letting me know that a particular friend is going to come calling.

It's really too bad she couldn't just call.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Jul- Love your blog! You know, it's going to be totally worth whatever it takes, if you end up with a wonderful kid like mine! Hoping and praying with you...

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  2. So do you still pretty much have a head ache all the time? I totally remember all that in high school, it was horrible for you. I always wondered if they ever figured all that out.

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  3. Friend! We should talk! And you should read this post.....

    http://everythingsheknows.blogspot.com/2010/01/everything-you-need-to-know-about-my.html

    ReplyDelete