Hello everyone! I want to thank you all for the incredible feedback and love on my last post. If you haven't read it yet, this is it. It was a post on losing yourself and it was really important for me and a very therapeutic process to write it. Today I am back with another semi-serious post. A few months ago I talked about my long struggle with my health. I told you all about the history of what I had gone through and took you through the process of my most recent surgery. I never gave you all a final update on that surgery. Sadly, it wasn't successful.
As I talked about then, (which you can see in this post, this post and this post) they removed my left ovary, appendix and a massive amount of endometriosis. They also found a fibroid tumor that they didn't remove as it would have been a very long, very painful surgery to recover from. On top of that, I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and Hashimoto's, both of which you can look up if you want to learn more about them. There are also still unknown problems. My greatest problem is excruciating, chronic pain. It is something I deal with all day, every single day.
My doctors are at a bit of a place of not knowing exactly what to do to help. This is what landed me at a pain management doctor. I fought this for as long as I could because I didn't want to have to feel that my only hope was to manage the pain, but not fix it. The doctor suggested nerve block injections under sedation. It was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. It involves 10 inch needles being put into my back and threaded through to the front to inject medicine that helps block the nerve that sends pain signals to the brain. I was told upfront that there was a chance it wouldn't work.
I took a month to think about it. In that month my pain got worse and worse. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was common for me not to leave my house for days. On the days I did leave it wasn't for long and almost always ended with me coming home crying in pain or coming frighteningly close to passing out from pain level. I knew I couldn't keep living this way, so I decided to agree to the injections.
It was scheduled bright and early for Friday, November 6th at a surgery center in my town. I was terrified. Unlike surgery, this wasn't something I knew what to expect for. I had done a lot of research and had found that for most people with cases and pain like mine, the injections hadn't helped at all. I strongly considered calling to cancel the day before but I knew that if by some chance this was the magic thing that would help control my pain, and I skipped it, I wouldn't be able to deal with it, so I went.
In the 24 hours before the procedure I had more anxiety attacks than I ever have. I have severe anxiety to begin with and it was so trigger by the fear of the procedure and the fear of it not working that I wasn't able to manage it. My parents helped me manage, but it was a rough day.
The next morning after less than 3 hours of sleep, I was off to the surgery center. My dad was working so it was just my mom and I. It was less than a 5 minute ride to the center. When we parked the car my anxiety hit again. "I'm not going in." I must have said that 10 times. It was always my choice if I wanted to have them done, but I felt like I didn't really have a choice. That was my doctors suggested next step and no one else had anything else to offer.
I finally went inside. I knew I had to. I checked in and then sat in the waiting room. They called my name and it was time to go back. They told me my mom couldn't come back with me. Now, I am normally a pretty chill person but I came very close to tears and told them that if she wasn't going back, I wasn't either. After a minute, they let us both come back. They did all of the preop stuff and I did my best to stay calm. The nurse was from California and was a Disney fan so that helped. She was really nice and kept talking to me about Disney to keep me calm.
There was a pretty long wait. Lots of people came in to talk to me and then it was time to go in. They brought me into the procedure room and had me switch to the table and lay face down. By this point I was crying and having an anxiety attack. I kept trying to tell someone but every time I moved my head to tell them, they told me not to move. I was supposed to be asleep for the procedure. I don't remember this part, but the doctor told my mom. They gave me the medicine to sedate me and I began thrashing around. I almost fell off of the table. They thought I was in danger so they backed off the sedation. I was then awake. I felt them put in the local anesthetic. They then kept pushing Fentanyl but I was wide awake.
No one ever bothered to tell me what was going on or to explain why I was awake and could feel everything they were doing. I kept crying. They kept telling me not to move. Then it was over and they had me roll back onto the other bed so they could wheel me out. They gave me a bottle of water and some crackers and told me that my doctor would be here soon. My abdominal pain was still as bad but I was hoping it could take a few days to kick in. After about 20 minutes my doctor came in. She asked me if the pain felt any different. I said it didn't and asked if it should feel different already. She told me yes, but that it could take up to an hour. They brought my mom in and told me I could go home. I went home and had to accept that it didn't work. Again. I gave it another hour. It still didn't work.
Fast forward 2 days and here I am writing this. Unfortunately I now know for sure that it didn't work. It made my back hurt a lot and I am still recovering from that, but it should go away soon. I'm sad, but I am not giving up. I am planning on setting up a doctors appointment to talk about more drastic steps that we could take, including a hysterectomy. I am at a point where I really want my life back, even if that means a big step like that.
Do I wish it had worked? Yes. Do I still have hope that someday, something will? Yes. In medicine it is never over, I just have to wait until we find the right thing.
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