Feeling Like Freddy

So back to the beginning...after Oliver was born, Joel and I made the decision that we were done having kids. This brought up the subject of birth control. Having been on the pill many years I really didn't want to go back to that but wasn't sure which route to go. Joel, the great guy that he is, suggested/offered to get a vasectomy so that is the route we went.

My menstrual cycles, after each birth, always went back to normal within 6-8 weeks. I always considered myself someone with a medium-heavy flow. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lightest flow I would rate myself a 6 or 7. After Oliver I returned to that pretty quickly, however, during the course of the next 2-3 years that changed drastically. I didn't notice it much at first and figured that my body was getting back to normal after having my second child and not going back on the pill. I had also heard from friends, websites and my doctor that getting back to normal usually took a bit longer after the second kid.

Okay, I have to stop for a second, I have found myself as I write this all out, loathing the word, normal. Normal is not normal, normal is different for each person, normal changes constantly. Normal schmoral people!

As time went on, I started to notice that I was inching my way up that 1 to 10 scale, a solid 7 maybe even inching towards an 8 pretty soon I was thinking that I might even be a 9. My cramping was also becoming more uncomfortable and at times, very painful. I had been on the pill for so long and that helped control the flow and cramping but now that I wasn't on it anymore I just figured that my body was figuring out what normal was. The problem is, it never stopped getting worse. My bleeding eventually became out of control and the cramping at times was horrible and what I would describe as violent. Violent may be a bit dramatic but in the midst of it, that is what came to mind. There were, typically, three days each cycle that I would be afraid to leave the house.

By this time the 1 to 10 scale, in my mind, did not have enough numbers. Why isn't there a 12 or 13, why stop at 10? I was passing clots the size of ping pong balls and flowing like a fountain. To give you an idea of how bad it was, I live less than a mile from Fred Meyers, there was more than one occasion that I would leave the house to go grab some groceries and by the time I got to the store, I would have bled through/filled my tampon or Diva cup, soaked and bled through my mattress sized pad, through my pants and onto the towel. A towel because I knew that it was a possibility so I always sat on a towel to avoid having to clean the seat of my car. I, more than once, never made it inside the store. Even if that didn't happen I was always afraid that it would so I would race through the store and race back home. My cramping associated with my cycle was also getting out of hand. I would cramp so bad that, at times, I couldn't stand up straight. Hard to explain to the sales associate at the store that your bent over the shopping cart and doing lamaze like breathing because of cramping and to please not worry because it will pass. They also didn't seem like normal cramps to me, more of a stabbing like pain which was different to the achy crampy like feeling that I was used to. Curling up on the couch in the fetal position for hours was not uncommon for me on those days.

After talking to my doctor about these symptoms and horror film like bleeding that could scare Freddy Krueger right off of Elm Street, she gave me a few options.

1) Do nothing and continue down this path. Not the optimal but still an option.

2) Try Advil, studies have shown that taking 4 Advil 3 times a day for the 3 or 4 days that I'm bleeding can decrease the amount of bleeding by as much as 10%. Doesn't sound like a enough of a decrease to me but might be what's needed to get me off the couch. Plus the extra amount of Advil may help take the edge off of the painful cramping. Have to be careful with this option though because Advil is tough on the liver. So mush so that she suggested that I take no other Advil for the rest of the month.

3) Ablation was her next suggestion. Taken from this website,
Endometrial ablation is the removal or destruction of the endometrium (lining of the uterus). It does not require hospitalization, and most women return to normal activities in a day or two. Ablation is an alternative to hysterectomy for many women with heavy uterine bleeding who are wish to avoid major surgery. After a successful endometrial ablation, most women will have little or no menstrual bleeding. Patient selection and physician experience is essential to a good outcome.
This is an option that I really considered. Could I live with the prolapse and other symptoms if the bleeding was minimal? I'll let you know later why I didn't go this route. She also told me that in some cases the lining of the uterus would/could actually repair itself and the bleeding could possibly return after time.

4) Hysterectomy, hopefully you all know what a hysterectomy is. In case you don't though, it's where they remove your uterus, the ovaries may or may not come out with the uterus, that's another big decision. More on this later.

Another huge side effect of my bleeding was that I was becoming extremely anemic. I can't remember the numbers but A range is low, B range is normal (there's that word again) and C range is above normal. I was testing in the low end of the A range. This was killing my energy. Getting out of bed on the really bad days was a monumental task. I did because I had kiddos running around but without them I am sure that I would have been in bed for days at a time. I am taking double the recommended daily amount of iron to keep my levels in the low end of the B range.

Next post I will discuss the 5th option and what I am doing now as a temporary fix (although it really hasn't "fixed" anything) until my surgery.