"Women's Health" Is A Joke

Our medical system is mesaes up.  It's been four months, and I still have no answers.  Dr. K says it's not endometriosis, Dr. M says it is.

Dr. M doesn't seem to feel like I should be able to make my own medical decisions and continued to try to talk me out of an ablation. I ended up scheduling a D&C, because that's what they want you to do.  Instead of doing the thing that will definitely take care of the problem, they want you to do the thing that probably won't fix it.  Heaven forbid a woman try to make decisions about her own reproductive health.

After scheduling the procedure, they called me a week later saying I would need to schedule a pre-op appointment since I scheduled the procedure more than 30 days after my last appointment.  At that point, I was done.  I cancelled my procedure.  I am done with appointments, and I am done with this sham of a health care system squeezing every possible penny they can from me.  So, I guess I'll be exploring holistic ways to treat uterine polyps and abnormal bleeding.  I'm so exhausted with it all.

But then my cycle started for the first time in three months.  Dr. K allowed me to just take out my Nuvaring and put in a new one instead of leaving it out for a week.  There have been...irregularities.  So much for being done with appointments, though.  I'm going back to see Dr. K to tell her the latest (rather disgusting) developments in the saga of my wonky reproductive system.  But I'd rather see her than Dr. M.  I have faith in Dr. K's competence.  I seriously can't stand Dr. M and her condescending attitude.  She was supposed to do a scope of some kind so she could actually look at what is going on in there, but she didn't get around to it the two times I'd see her before.  So, I'm going to see if Dr. K can do that while I'm there.  I'm at the breaking point with all of this.  I'm either going to have a psychotic break, or I'm just going to stop caring.

When I see her, I'm going to request a partial hysterectomy and see what Dr. K has to say about it.  I would rather them just take out everything, but taking out ovaries make it even more difficult.  If I leave the ovaries, they'll still function as normal.  I just won't have anything to grow a kid with.  And that's fine.  I've had four months to think about this.  I don't want biological children.  I'm not sure I want children at all.  I don't think I'm cut out for it.  I don't have the patience one needs for child rearing.  So...I just want to be as done with all of this as I can be.

Can I Please Get Some Answers?

I finally had my consultation for the D&C/ablation with Dr. M.  Of course, because I'm a 34 year-old woman with so many reproductive years ahead of me (cue big, fat eye roll), Dr. M tried to talk me out of the ablation.  She said she only likes to use that as a last-ditch effort, because birth control of some kind must be taken from now until menopause.  Okay.  I don't see the problem.  Birth control is free.

Really, I just think that doctors want to prevent younger women from eliminating the possibility of pregnancy all together.  I relayed the information provided to me from Dr. K and told her I've had three months to think about this and come to terms with the consequences.  And let's be real.  I've been told it's unlikely I'm going to have kids right now, anyway.  I also have zero romantic prospects.  There is no guarantee I'm going to meet anyone and feel I know them well enough in the few reproductive years I have left.  If I'm already in premature ovarian failure as Dr. K suspects, how good are my eggs, anyway?

At my age, you have to start worrying about the health and safety of any potential fetus. Don't get me wrong.  My conscience won't let me put a possible child at risk for serious developmental issues just to sate a biological need to reproduce.  If I do find someone who isn't scared off by the idea of not being able to have children of our own, then we can adopt.

During the consult, Dr. M brought up the idea that I might have endometriosis.  Hold up.  I thought my endometrial biopsy ruled that out.  The tissue wasn't in great shape, but there were no indications of endometriosis present.  Dr M did an exam of her own, which I wasn't mentally prepared for.  She was checking the length of my uterine ligaments.  Apparently, they're very short which can indicate endometriosis.  But it can indicate nothing at all.

She wants me to come back next week after we have the results from my follow up ultrasound which is tomorrow.  Joy of joys.  And then, she wants to stick a camera in there so she can see what's actually going on.  I mean...I'm having an ultrasound.  Why can't you just do it all at once?  As much as they're sticking things in my vagina, I should start charging them.

At the end of the day, I just have more questions than I did when I went in.  And I really don't understand why they won't just let a woman make decisions about her body without second guessing her.  I'm not one of those women who is going to regret this decision.  A.) It's highly unlikely I'm going to have kids anyway, B.)  I've been given enough time to think this through and come to terms with the fact that I won't be having babies of my own.  C.)  It will improve my quality of life.  Why do I have to take a less effective option simply because someone my age still has a few reproductive years left?

I'm frustrated and angry, and I just want some real answers.

Well...that was certainly a thing that happened...

Yesterday, I had my third ever trans-vaginal ultrasound.  I would like to say that since I'm a TVU veteran, that the procedure wasn't traumatizing in the slightest, and I handled it like a pro.  That, however, would be a gigantic lie of the fiery pants variety.

I was nervous, because I hate trans-vag ultrasounds.  They shove this in you and twist, turn, and dig around in your vagina taking pictures of things that, by all rights, should not see the light of day.  So, I asked my mom to go with me, because I didn't want to be alone.

This particular ultrasound was awful.  The tech was bad.  She didn't really bother to prep me before she jammed the wand in.  It was startling, and it hurt.  Never mind that it's already an unnerving experience to be in stirrups, open, exposed, and vulnerable.  The whole thing felt humiliating and made me nauseous.  I felt like a zoo exhibit.  She didn't try to talk to me to keep my mind off it, which was very disconcerting. The other two techs who worked with me made sure to talk to me about what they were seeing, asked how I was feeling,  Instead, this one talked to my mom, all the while marking little arrows on the ultrasound. WHICH IS TERRIFYING, BY THE WAY, BECAUSE I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT KIND OF NOTES SHE WAS MAKING.

To add to it, there's my mom, trying her best to be supportive...but she's bad at it.  She's not good at understanding that things like pain and emotional distress are relative things.  If she's not currently experiencing it, she doesn't understand why you should be.  Don't get me wrong, I appreciated her being there to hold my hand, but a little more empathy would have been nice.  I don't mean to say that she was a cold, unfeeling harpy the entire time.  Far from it.  Her concern was obvious, she just didn't know how to comfort me as I was sobbing during and after the ordeal.

The emotional fallout was something I didn't expect and was in no way prepared for.  I felt humiliated and violated while this woman dug around in my insides without even acknowledging me.  It was as though I was invisible to her.  I didn't expect her to coddle me, but some sort of acknowledgment would have been helpful.  She was nice enough, so I don't think she was being purposefully dismissive.  Maybe she was new enough to the job that she hasn't developed a bedside manner yet, but it really messed with my head.  Lying there for 15 minutes while a stranger dug around in my vagina and made notes on a computer...It's not a gentle process, and afterward, I was left sore, stinging, and crampy.

I didn't really have time to process all those emotions yesterday, because I had to go right home and get to work on some last-minute edits, and I haven't really had a chance to process it today, because I woke up and went right back into the edits and then had to go to work.

So, here I am at my desk, randomly crying, and I feel like a basket case.  I'm still sore and nauseous, and I really just want to go to bed and eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's non-dairy Chunky Monkey, but here I am, adulting like a champ in the middle of a nervous breakdown.  Achievement Unlocked.

I'm too young for this shit...

I'm so bad at following through.  With anything.  I'm constantly starting new projects and get distracted halfway through and never return to complete them.  Some projects I return to every once in a while and pick up where I left off.  This blog is one of the latter.

I've blogged before about the problems I've had with my lady plumbing.  I've been to several doctors in the past who have just tried to put me on birth control hoping that corrects the problem.  It never does.  I was once on birth control and continued to bleed for nine weeks.  After week three (I was used to having two-week-long periods at this point), I began to get concerned.  So, I called my OBGYN's office.  Apparently, that wasn't alarming enough to get me in to see her in a reasonable amount of time, so I had to schedule my appointment TWO MONTHS OUT.

At five weeks, I called again to see if there were any cancellations.  Again, I was made to feel as if bleeding for five weeks from my reproductive organs was nothing to be alarmed about and no move was made to accommodate me or my fears.  I wasn't even allowed to speak with my doctor.  After bleeding for nine weeks, it finally stopped, and I called to cancel my appointment.  That was the last time I tried to get help for the problem.

Recently, however, things have been worse.  I've been tired, laggy, and my periods have become even more erratic than they were to begin with.  So, I decided to try again.  I have a friend with endometriosis, and she has an OBGYN she swears by.  Luckily, Dr. K was taking new patients.

My initial visit was basically a consult.  It was an opportunity for us to feel each other out and for her to get to know my history.  Dr. K was horrified when I told her what I'd been dealing with and stunned that no one had done any tests to even attempt to find out the cause.

I told her I wanted a full hormone panel, because I knew there was something wrong, and I wanted to figure out what it was so I could fix it.  Bleeding for two weeks, having a two week break, and bleeding again is not normal, and it's physically exhausting.

So, she scheduled me for every blood test under the sun.  Seriously.  They took just a little under a pint of blood.  And then, I waited.  I waited for two weeks until all the tests came back.  I knew there was nothing life-threatening.  I'd been dealing with this for nearly fifteen years.  I would be dead by now if something was horribly wrong with me.  However, the waiting game is never fun.

Dr. K called on Monday to go over my results.  She told me I'm anemic, which isn't a surprise since I bleed more often than I don't.  She also said all of my hormones were a little on the low side of normal, except my testosterone and luteinizing hormone.  Those two were practically non-existent.  I was surprised about the testosterone, to be honest.  If anything, I had expected it to be high.

I asked what it meant that they were so low, and she said it means that I have entered perimenopause.  I had been joking for a while about going through the Change of Life, but I was half serious.  I was kind of hoping for it, to be honest, because it's the easiest answer to the issues I'm having.  That does not, however, rule out any possible underlying causes.

She is going to do even more tests and take an endometrial biopsy, because she's still concerned I may have been dealing with endometriosis since the very beginning of my menstrual cycles.  I honestly don't think that's the case.  I've had two trans-vaginal ultrasounds (I loathe them with the fire of a thousand suns), and no one mentioned seeing anything that would indicate endometriosis.  Oh, and this afternoon, I get to have a third!  Because the universe hates me.

 The endometrial biopsy will tell her if I have healthy cells in my uterine lining.  If the cells are healthy, we will leave it be.  If not, she may recommend an endometrial ablation, which is where they go in and charbroil your uterine lining.  She said I would have to be 110% certain I never wanted kids because the procedure would drastically lower the chances of me being able to get pregnant.  She also said that it was highly unlikely I would be able to get pregnant anyway with my hormone levels being what they are.  

It's not terribly surprising.  I'm in perimenopause.  It's basically a gradual decline in your ability to reproduce, and I'm fairly certain this has been the case since my early to mid-20s.  That's when I started having weird, super painful periods that were two weeks long, made me dry heave, and gave me visual migraines.  I think it went un-diagnosed so long, because it's highly unusual for a woman in her early 20s to be perimenopausal.  Heck, it's unusual for someone younger than 35! 

So, for all intents and purposes, I am infertile.  Which isn't awful news.  It's not great, but it's not devastating.  Well...not for me.  My mom is pretty bummed about it, but I'm handling it well.  The first night was rough.  It's one thing to make the decision yourself.  It's another entirely to have that decision taken out of your hands.  

That's not to say it's impossible.  Time, however, is not on my side.  Even if I did find someone I wanted to have children with, a pregnancy attempt would involve expensive hormone therapies and procedures like in vitro fertilization.  I could maybe freeze some eggs and use a surrogate when the time came, but that's a costly decision I'm not prepared to make at this point.

Who knows?  Dr. K has referred me to an endocrinologist to address the overall state of my whacked out hormones.  Maybe they can get everything back on track, and the infertility will sort itself out.  I don't think I care either way, to be honest.  Adoption is always an option.  There are plenty of kids out there who need loving homes.  Or I could just adopt fifteen more dogs, a couple of hairless cats, and a hedgehog. 

I've still got several diagnostics ahead of me and a trip to the endocrinologist.  I'm not worried about the diagnostics because, as I said before, if something were horribly wrong, I would probably have been dead a long time ago.  I am, however, interested in what the endocrinologist has to say.