The knife-wielding maniac I live with

(No, it's not my husband, my kid, or any other human being. More about that in a minute.)

I've been completely absent. Please accept my heartfelt apology for that.

I filed the forms necessary to keep us homeschooling legally (see previous entry); I even gave a talk about how to do so at our local library (and collapsed for a few days afterward). I've mailed out a lot of issues, and am deeply grateful to say (with many, many thanks to all the people who've been spreading the SHM word) that although I'm not quite out of issue #8 yet, I'm going to have to order more from the printers. I've also been doing most of the usual schlepping and hauling associated with homeschooling and homemaking.

But it's been sleepwalking for the most part, which is part of why I am so behind on things that count. I am now hideously behind on email and other matters involving the heart and the mind.

The nausea has been nonstop for weeks now, and it's really sapping my will to live (which keeps reminding me of the 2000 Year Old Man and Dr. Will Tolive, but never mind). But what's really throwing me down on the mat is the pain, which is occasional and intense, and the threat of it, which is now nearly constant.

Just so I don't have to be completely creepy all by myself, I'll quote a woman who was quoted in The Endometriosis Sourcebook. Other than the fact that I never go to movies in theatres any more, this could have been written by me:
 
"Knifelike pain, right through the rectum, without warning. One moment I'd be standing in line for a movie, talking with a friend, and then I'd be doubled over, trying not to black out. The worst was telling people where the pain was. No one wants to hear about this symptom -- believe me -- and then they don't want to accept that it's related in some way to bad periods. I don't think there's anything harder than having to live with a symptom nobody is even willing to hear about."

Actually, other than the movies aspect, one part of this anecdote doesn't apply to me. I really couldn't give less of a spam if no one wants to hear about my pain. If I'm doubled over and screaming for sweet death to come to my rescue, I'm going to be audible. I'm often even articulate on the occasion, since I've had a lot of practice.

My husband and I have known each other for (and this probably shouldn't even be legal) closing in on thirty years. (We haven't been married that long -- given my age, that would only be legal in disgustingly patriarchal regions of the world.) Things have not always been smooth, to say the least. But there is something pretty damned amazing about a guy who can hear the words "screaming rectal pain" and be nothing but sympathetic. If there's something there other than sympathy, he ought to receive a special-category Oscar. I don't even care if he's faking it. If he's horrified or terrified or just plain repulsed and he can work past that to the point where he seems this nice, he should get extra credit.

I used to have to deal with this lovely symptom just every once in a while. Then it was once or twice a month, during that O So Special Time. Then my ability to ovulate started to feel left out and sulky, so the above-mentioned Screaming Rectal Pain decided to let her in on the fun and I had to worry during two separate weeks. Then SRP decided, well, everybody loves a surprise party. So now I've been running around on any old day of the month with a knife pointed at a region so undignified I hate to admit that I even have it.

"Run around" is the operative phrase, because the one thing worse than the fact that this is a pain nobody really wants to hear or talk about is the fact that although painkillers won't touch this howling wolverine, walking at a brisk pace can sometimes help keep it at a manageable level until it gets bored and leaves. I never really realized how much of an indulgence it is to just double up and writhe around when I'm in gut-splitting agony, until I found out by accident that I really ought to be sprinting at what feels like the point of a very sharp knife.

Nice. I need one more thing to do. That's just great.

It doesn't always work. If I'm picked up and thrown out of bed in the middle of the night out of a sound sleep by the pain, it doesn't matter how many hallway marathons I try to stagger; once it's got its claws into me past a certain point, doubling up and writhing (accompanied by the occasional washcloth stuffed into my mouth so the neighbors don't freak out and call the cops about the screaming) is my only option. But if I'm wide-awake and I can start moving early on, I've got a fighting chance. And then it's a weird marathon to see who's got more staying power, me or the blinding pain.

Sometimes it just stays for a few minutes. Sometimes it's a few hours. Sometimes, and this is what's been sapping my willpower and draining my ability to get anything worth doing done, it comes over for a few minutes, fades out almost completely, ker-blams right back just when I'd started to get my hopes up, and fades back out again. And so on. For hours.

Which is a lot of fun to explain after you've just announced to your dear kidlet that it’s time to start getting ready to go to the library. Thank Shiva it hasn't happened while I'm driving. Yet.

Can't live like this. Doctors are horrifying paternalistic rhymes-with-blinsurance-bores, but sometimes even I need one.

The last time I tried to get this professionally treated was over a year ago. The doctor was such a lackwit that I vowed to just ride this out and, should push come to shove, perform surgery on myself on the kitchen table using that lovely silver set my dear mother-in-law gave me several years ago.

I have no idea if this new guy will be any better. I couldn't get an appointment right away, which is a good sign because the good ones in any field tend to be in demand. (Dr. Wrong had a same-day appointment available and an empty waiting room.) This guy specializes in laparoscopic surgery. (Dr. Why Am I Paid argued that surgery was "never" performed for this kind of condition, which was pretty rhymes-with-smallsy considering that there's no question or controversy at all about the fact that endo can only even be DIAGNOSED by means of surgery.)

I'm seeing the new guy tomorrow, which was a bit of a surprise but my husband kept calling and pushing for earlier appointments until this one turned up.

I have no idea how this will go. I don't want to get my hopes up. I just want to know what the bleep I'm dealing with here, because the lady I quoted is wrong: the only thing worse than a weird symptom nobody wants to hear about is a symptom that you can't even call a symptom since you don't really know what it's a symptom of.

I've done enough reading to know that if the guy tries to tell me that I'm suffering from irritable bowel syndrome -- "a catch-all nondiagnosis," as my endo sourcebook tartly describes it -- that screaming you hear tomorrow may not be mine. And may his deity of choice help him if he warns me against believing everything I read on the Internet.