Insomnia and Tears

Insomnia and tears seem to go hand in hand for me lately. I'm up to 1-1:30 am nearly every night. I have difficulty in falling asleep. I don't nap in the afternoons so I should be tired enough to sleep but I'm not. I went from not suffering from it to suffering from it.

I'm still crying at times (probably due to the lack of sleep so I'm up thinking about things). I never wanted to lose my organs...gone is my uterus, left ovary and cervix. Gone is more than half of my right ovary which tries to function but I still suffer from hot flashes every now and then. I realize that with the extent of disease that I had, there was little choice for pain relief and I needed pain relief. It's a painful reality that I live with. It's my Catch-22...rip out the organs that are so disease they aren't worth saving or keep them and pray that I wouldn't have the daily pain that I was in before my surgery. We (Jeff, Dr. Albee and myself) chose for the best possible pain relief and that meant ripping out the organs.

When I found out that I definitely had this disease in January 2000, never did I figure that it would be this bad. Never did I figure that it would be bad enough for me to rip out the very organs that I longed to keep. Never would I imagine crying over their loss. My tears aren't constant but they are there late at night when the house is quiet and I can't sleep and upon waking in the morning when I long for more sleep but can't get any.

I keep meaning to call my friends up to vent about this disease seems so selfish at the moment to me. So I wait until I'm a little less needy.

My migraines have lessened but is that due to me taking butterbur twice a day? I have no clue.

It'll be 9 months this month since my surgery. Maybe that has alot to do with things.


just maybe..........

Been up Since 4 am...

I woke up this morning in sheer pain with my tailbone area. On a scale of 1 to 10, mine was a 9. I made it to the bathroom and came back out to try to sleep. Before 6 I gave up and went downstairs to take my pain med. I didn't want to wake Jeff up to get it for me at 4 even though I could have used it. I immediately took my med after getting downstairs and slept for maybe an hour.

My pain level is down to a 4.5 but don't ask me to stand or walk around too much today. I'm resting on the couch with my heating pad, my blankets, and my pillow to sit on. The kids are sick so they are resting as well today.

I had tailbone pain before my last surgery. While this pain has diminished dramatically with the number of days, I'm still having it and it can get very bad.

Side effects to the Imitrex Nasal??

Okay I took the Imitrex the evening of Day 5 to get rid of the migraines and while they did, they also caused me to have some other problems: severe abdominal pain and headaches that wouldn't quit. I had those nasty headaches the last time I tried it (even mentioned that to my primary care doc at my last visit with her). I'm not pleased about the side effects of the Imitrex.

So you give me a drug to get rid of my migraines which causes nasty headaches that won't go away with medications and abdominal pain to boot?????

Does this sound like fun to anybody???

Migraine Day 5...Went to the Primary Care Doctor

Woke up with a low level migraine today. So I put in a call to my primary care doc and I had a 3:30 appointment. Thank goodness for my dad who is retired and can watch the kids while Jeff takes me to the appointment!!!

I requested my doc to run a hormonal panel to see where my hormone levels are at. She refused telling me that I'm either in menopause or not in menopause. I'm just trying to find out why I'm having the migraines to begin with. I'm thinking it's hormonal but how the heck am I supposed to tell without some help from her????

The next time I have a migraine I'm thinking of contacting my obgyn to see what she thinks.

Gotta go to rest my head

Migraine Day 4

I'm miserable...really miserable. I have had a migraine for the better part of 4 days now which started Friday. It's cyclical. I was hoping that it was just a fluke.

I don't know how many more days of this I can take. My migraine med works but it knocks me out so I can't take it during the day until Jeff comes home after work.

I'm trying to search for answers online but my head hurts so much that it is difficult to read the screen.

I'll be in lurk mode until this goes away...I'm hurting too much

Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009!!

2008 sums up with one word loss:

I lost alot with surgery but hopefully (hands in prayer here on my knees) this will be it. I'm still recuperating from it--emotionally and physically. I have my good days and bad days...my good moments and my bad moments.

I lost people that I thought were my friends. Friends who adopted as well. I was dropped like holey pair of shoes. No word, no explanation.

I lost my old 1994 Corolla. She did us well and is just a baby yet with just over 104,000 miles on it.

And don't even mention 401K...mine took a big beating.

However I gained so much as well:

I can drive more than 15 minutes without pain. Half an hour is pushing it at the moment but it can be done.

I gained some friends as well...they are not local to me at all but still within the adoption community and can sympathize what I'm going through.

I gained a 2007 Toyota Sienna LE. I haven't yet been able to get the monster into the garage but I'll learn one of these days (I better since Toyotas last so long).

I gained a big reduction in my pain levels with my endo. Thank you Dr. Albee and Dr. Yeung, Dr. Sinervo, Muriel, Heather, and the rest of the staff that we dealt with at the CEC. You made me feel like I was the only patient in the world that you were dealing with at that point in time and made me feel at ease. THANK YOU!!!!

Out with 2008 and in with 2009!!

We are just hoping for one where Jeff can use his vacation for vacation and not to take care of me after surgery. We hope that we can do some work on our home this year. I'm hoping to be able to drive as far as my Sienna's gas tank can take me.

I'm hoping for a healthy happy New Year for my family and for yours.

Song that I heard on TCM recently

I was watching TCM this month and this hauntingly beautiful song came on. I thought about everything that has happened with me this year:

The loss of me being able to see Dr. Martin Robbins in Maine due to him losing his colo-rectal surgeon

Me deciding that Dr. Albee was definitely "The Surgeon" to go see

My good faith to see my insurance company's "Top Surgeon" who turned out to be a major joke since I "don't have endo" and that "all of the records that he received from me were worthless and irrelevant"

My decision that I would continue to have surgery done by Dr. Albee

Me learning that I lost my uterus sometime in the evening/early morning hours from Jeff along with my cervix and part of my vagina

And me crying over the loss of it all shortly after surgery

And right before Christmas, the flood of the emotions that I had when we were trying to conceive back during Christmas Eve/Day of 2001

In the midst of this sorrow, I heard this song on TCM. For some reason, it's striking a chord with me right now.