Endometriosis, hypothetically diagnosed thrice, and to be surgically explored in my very-near future.

As it were, the appointment with the OB/GYN went well today. I’ve actually been her patient for three years but have never met her, as she uses practitioners to do her daily bidding and saves up personal audiences for the real humdingers. Hi, my name is Ashley and I am an Official Endometrial Humdinger. (Your line: Hello Ashley. Please stop talking about your body.)

I was quite impressed by her candor and penchant for actually, you know, listening to me and at least acting very much like she was interested. The bottom line is that I have to have a laparoscopic surgery to diagnose and begin treatment on what appears very much to be endometriosis. After surgery, I begin Lupron treatment and other hormone therapy, and should be quite comfortable within the year, if only temporarily. Nothing like having longterm goals, I say, especially when they involve the cessation of the searing and stabbing pain in my right side.

The irony of all of this is that the pain is nothing new. I made an ER visit just over three years ago and was diagnosed with ovarian cysts. I followed up with a practitioner (not humdingery enough for the doc, apparently) and while she was quite sympathetic and cordial, she sweetly informed me that there wasn’t much we could do as long as the cysts behaved themselves and only caused me very severe pain, and not something serious, like, you know, death.

When I got sick last Thursday night, the nausea and vomiting were accompanied by the three-year-old pain, except in a scorchingly sharp fashion, and I told the doctor, matter-of-very-factly, that there would be cysts-aplenty on that-there ovary. Second fallopian to the right and straight on til Morphine.

Except the ultrasound was clear of such, and I sheepishly asked the ER doc what else could be attributed to the pain—oh the pain—and when he’d be back with more Morphine. (Hey Doc, PS: Where’s the Morphine?) He replied that it looked as though the pain, if it couldn’t be attributed to anything they might find in bloodwork, urine culture, ultrasound, and contrast CT, appeared to him to be related to probable endometriosis.

Vis-a-vis the drugs, however, he apparently wasn’t quite through violating me all up in that shiz, and the next doses of Morphine and a knockoutable amount of Phenergan came into my possession, esophagusly-speaking, right about the time they laughingly realized I’d be completely comatose during the pelvic exam portion of the evening.

(Just so you know, waking up during a pelvic exam implies that you were, at one time, asleep during a pelvic exam. There are just so many things wrong with that situation that there is no sufficient point at which to begin. Not that I would know a thing about it.)

(Nurse: Wow, she’s gone.
Doctor: Huh. Pretty much.)

(That’s all I remember.)

If the pain isn’t resolved and/or managed with copious amounts of Lortab by Monday, I am to schedule a surgery for first thing Thursday morning, 21 June. As it turns out, however, Meadow is due to part with her sweet little spawn at some point post-34-week Monday. The window there, folks, is small. I realize, of course, that it’s no shame to be poor … wait, no, that’s another story. I realize, of course, that Meadow has, and most likely will be able to continue to give birth without my involvement, but I really, really want to be there and find no humor in the irony it would be for us to be lying in beds in hospitals ten miles apart.

The doctor seems to think that once I reach the seven-to-ten day mark, that the pain will begin to resolve itself, though, and I will be able to have more of a hand in scheduling my ’scopic invasion, abdominally speaking. If such is the case, I will still call to schedule on Monday, but for the Thursday after, as in 28 June. She doesn’t want to wait much longer than that, though—and cue boding music. Dun dun dun.

And that, my friends, is how an ovarian bill becomes a big, fat, lawful pain in my side.