Good News/ Bad News

I wanted to update after my last post that I am officially approved to begin the Lupron whenever my doctor tells me I'm ready and my insurance is officially paying for it, so everything is a GO!  I see my doctor on Wednesday and I am sure I will find out a lot then about when I may begin using the Lupron and any other adjustments I'll need to make.  My approval went through in less than two weeks which, after hearing my doctor tell me it often takes about a month AND it was during the holiday season, must mean that it went through very quickly so Yay!  That is a huge deal for me!  Although I've had two surgeries and surgery must be done first before you can take this drug, so I guess I met the requirements without any questions.

Good News/Bad News:

- The Good News is that almost immediately upon leaving my doctor's office, I felt calm inside.  I knew this was the right thing for me at this time so the next thing on my list was staying in control and keeping my stress level down so I can be prepared for whatever may or may not happen when I begin the Lupron. I felt better than I had been feeling for about a month and then I was still feeling fine, but I had lost a lot of sleep while I was transitioning from one antidepressant to another, so that did hit me eventually.  [I also learned that my cousin is expecting her first baby, so that is just amazingly great news and I am so excited for that and to meet my first little grand-cousin (I know that is incorrect but when I get to second/third/removed/etc. I mostly do not pay attention).  She is my first cousin to be pregnant, so it's very cool for her and her hubby.  She's also been very supportive of me and it would feel nice to be able to be supportive of her back!]  I did get to visit with a great friend (who lives way too far away) and her adorable baby and family over the holidays and that totally lifts my spirits as well!

- So the good news was that I feel prepared for pretty much all outcomes and I am still hopeful.  The Bad News is that my grandmother's health is deteriorating, though I hope she stays healthy long enough to meet her first great-grandchild.  Along with her bad health, a member of my extended family has chosen this time to be as icky as I can imagine.  I won't go into specifics, but it is frustrating because it is unnecessary and ruins my calmness.  I can choose my friends, my acquaintances, my doctor... but I don't get to choose my family.  Since becoming sick, I've tightened my circle of close friends and I don't go into specifics with mere acquaintances, but I do not have any energy to give to toxic relationships so I choose not to have anyone in my life who is negative.  More importantly, I do not have negative thoughts about those people!  Recently, however, I realize I have spent way too much time harboring negative feelings about a particular family member and I have to choose to not be around her as well because this is the most important time for me to be stress-free.  Lupron is the drug that scared me for a long time but I was in a great place and feeling very good about taking it, and feeling ready!  Today I realized I've been not sleeping as well and feeling stressed about the repercussions of one person's actions within my extended family and it occurred to me that I need to be selfish for this moment in my life, until I find out how my body adapts to this new drug and I don't have room for negativity at all.  I'm actually writing about in the hope that I can be done thinking about it, so we shall see how that works.

I have not quite figured out how to stay completely out of this person's orbit, but I may just have to do what I've learned: Decide if an event or visit or discussion is going to make me feel worse than I feel before attending that event or seeing that person, and if so, then I just won't do it.  If I think that I will come out feeling even better than when I went in, then I do it.  It relates to the Spoon Theory Article, but it's my own way of counting spoons.  I look at everything this way right now and somehow I need to get myself doing that again, even if it involves family.  It is simply about pluses and minuses and it is how my brain works.  It always yields the healthiest outcomes for me without allowing myself to dwell on being bummed about missing out on something.  And I am writing this to hold myself accountable for doing this and to not allow myself any negativity from right now until I can comfortably say how the Lupron is working and will continue to work.  And you are all welcome to hold me accountable to staying centered (calm in my own way) and positive!


- I will update after my doctor's appointment on Wednesday.

*If anyone reads this and has used Lupron, I would LOVE to hear what your experience was and if you email me from this page, I will get back to you!

Chemo Day #2

Today is my mom's second chemotherapy treatment.  I will be going with her and it will probably be a long day, although I found that yesterday was more stressful for me.  (Remember, on this blog we are looking at everything through endometriosis-colored glasses).  I do not expect to feel great and I certainly don't enjoy my mother having cancer.  But we're on to the second treatment and I will see how my body reacts to what will be a long day tomorrow.  I have been told that she should not have a worse time with the second treatment than the first, but who knows what will actually happen.  In the meantime, this all tires me out completely and I know she will need help at least for the 3-4 days following the procedure and that is going to be hard on my body but I got my shot, a haircut, and hopefully food in the house because I imagine it's going to be a tiring week.  I may continue to write daily, I may be a bit overwhelmed and write occasionally or I may write next week when the worst is over.  We'll see what happens.  Positive thoughts and best wishes and lots of love can never ever hurt!  (Along with perhaps an IV of coffee...)

Common Misconceptions about the Chronically Ill

The following is an awesome article I was sent by a friend of mine. (Thank you, K).  I read it and really connected to all the points, having had people around me hold these misconceptions, particularly numbers 1, 4 & 5.  This is an article originally published December 5, 2013 by Toni Bernhard, J.D.  I take absolutely no credit for any of what is posted below.  The original link is here.

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Six Common Misconceptions about the Chronically Ill

What those who are healthy rarely understand about those who are sick or in pain

Published on December 5, 2013 by Toni Bernhard, J.D. in Turning Straw Into Gold

More often than not, chronic illness and chronic pain go hand-in-hand, so when I use the term “chronically ill,” I’m including people who are in chronic pain. My hope is that it won’t be long until these common misconceptions become uncommon ones, as people become educated about what life is like for those who suffer from chronic illness (130 million in the U.S. alone).

Feeling Better, BUT...

My last post was telling you that I've made steps in a positive direction (yay!) which is HUGE over the past few months.  That post was all good news.  I don't have bad news to go with it, but I'm afraid too many people are going to read and think that everything is fine now.  In case I haven't said it already a thousand times, endometriosis is not curable.  I am going to have it.  Tomorrow, next year, at least until menopause... I'm going to have it.  With that comes decisions about hormones... which I am also going to be on until menopause to keep the endometriosis at bay.  And those hormones are not really supposed to be long term solutions.  They come with a long list of side effects!  Plus the supplements to help my body fight off the endometriosis that I guess my body wants to produce.

A Night In the Life of Pain

Ahh... bedtime.  It seems to come around oh so often.  I think I would enjoy longer days and less sleeping...  But we all know that we have to sleep.  Well sleep is something that has been consistently hard since I began having endometriosis symptoms.  

At the beginning, I don't know if I would have been sleeping or not, but the pain was so bad, I basically didn't sleep normally for months.  The thing with sleep is that we try to relax and turn off our brains and let the sheep counting take us away...  Well when you have acute pain, chronic pain, post surgery pain... it is not easy to relax.  I could make it throughout the day simply by keeping myself distracted by doing about 3 mindless things at once.  But if I stopped doing those things, it didn't matter how tired I was, all I could think about was the pain.  I was uncomfortable every second before I found a doctor who could manage pain while also dealing with the endometriosis.  I have never slept with the tv on, radio on, or even been able to fall asleep to music, but I started leaving Netflix playing on my computer while I was in bed trying to sleep and I am only now getting myself able to sleep without the computer playing some television show.

Stress

So I have a list of topics I have yet to post about and I haven't been feeling well enough to write about any of them today.  It's very frustrating.  I'm feeling more pain for the past few days than I have since probably before surgery.  I haven't done anything exerting and yet there it is.  I guess I could direct you to the posts on tiredness or setbacks but I'm typing my post today because usually I would not chronicle today at all.  I was in pain so I had no desire to think about anything interesting I could write about earlier and now I am ok because I took extra pain meds but not thinking as clearly as I would like.  So normally I would just skip today, but days like these are important in understanding what my life is like still even though I would love to hide them away and deny I still have them.  Instead, I will give you a brief insight into my stream of consciousness during times like these.  

I hate to let myself admit it but today's pain makes me nervous.  It feels like pre-surgery pain...  I am hoping that I can attribute it to the overly stressful two months I've had because otherwise something might be wrong and I just do not want that at all.  I'm supposed to be gaining strength and overall health and having LESS pain, but that is not happening right now.  I was annoyed to be feeling bad while my sister was visiting because I couldn't even really sit and chat.  Small talk is the first thing to go when I feel pain.  (For my purposes, I would say that I'd been feeling "discomfort" mostly.  It's annoying and can interfere with me get my real life back, but it is way better than what I would call "pain."  For the past maybe three days I'd call it pain.)