This week’s theme is:
Mental impact that endo has had on your life.
If there is an upside to endometriosis, it is that the condition has had a marked impact on my ability to calculate the benefits and drawbacks of a choice in order to find the optimal time to do something or to avoid doing of the same.
On birth control, I calculate how many days of breakthrough bleeding are too many before I should just give up and take a withdrawal bleed. In the event of special occasions — defined as any significant deviation from my normal schedule — I calculate the odds of getting through that event sans bleed, taking a preemptive MenstroMonster so that I’m more reliably in the clear for whatever event is happening.
I calculate how many months I should stick out Brand X birth control, hoping Y side effect will dissipate before resolving myself to the inevitable Conclusion Z: this crud is here to stay.
I calculate my pain medication like it is my second job. Do I take one NSAID for my first dose of the morning or two? The tablet or the liqui-gel? Am I taking acetaminophen today, too? How many? The extra strength or regular-but-time release? Importantly, how long after my NSAIDs am I staggering this dose?
Don’t even get me started on what happens when the possibility of codeine is thrown into the mix. The logistics — including teaching, writing, driving (or arranging alternate transportation), cooking, sleeping — could merit their own task force.
I plan workouts, though to be fair, I think a lot of people plan workouts. But I’m not sure how many people plan workouts with the question of, “How do I keep my pelvis and hips from seizing up and trying to kill me?” as an ever-present underlying concern. How best to reconcile the facts that the movements that tighten the smaller muscles in my pelvis and exacerbate pain are the same movements that build up larger muscles and give me strength to — physically — bear it?
I calculate the best times for evenings out and other social events — choosing dates that are most likely to be manageable pain days, selecting the activities most likely to remain manageable should pain levels exceed my predictions, gathering all the supplies I need or want to have on hand in case of pain, along with how I will keep each one casually concealed.
I plan sex.
Because there’s endometriosis hanging out in my bowel, I also calculate the benefits and risks of eating this trigger food in that amount at this other time and place. Because, you know, some of my trigger foods are tasty and others are unavoidable. And, “I didn’t want to be hungry,” and, “Eating it was enjoyable,” both get to be legit reasons to eat food, regardless of the intestinal havoc they might wreak later.
I calculate whether it’s worth it to seek out yet another specialist who might have new meaningful insight into my issues — whether I’ll be able to get to or afford another consult, whether the news will be any different, whether they’ll understand why I’ve already chosen to prioritize as I have, whether they’ll be condescending and pushy if I end up not wanting their next new thing, whether I’ll be able to afford the next new thing if I did want it. Or, you know, if I’m better off managing with mt PCP, who understands both what I’ve already tried and who I am as a person.
I’m continually calculating and recalculating whether it wouldn’t be better to push for a hysterectomy — balancing the potential to decrease the spread of the endo, pain, and weird nerve happenings against the potential side effects of induced menopause and possible add back therapy and the potential that the surgery itself would create adhesions and therefore new pain. For whatever it’s worth, my current balance sits at, Not now, but I’m keeping careful track of changes.
So when, for example, another teacher asks me how I plan a lesson or a unit or an assessment, sometimes it’s all I can do not to laugh. Not because I think this a skill that should be automatic — it isn’t, and they’re legit questions, and so laughing would be unkind — but because I have had so many opportunities to practice.
