Trust Your Intuition
Is your little voice always telling you what to do?
Leaf kept me sane, along with my never ending list of morning routines. I imagined the dragon was the pain in my lower left, silent or hidden with occasional pangs of pain, but mostly sitting beneath the surface of the sea. The vast mysterious ocean.
After a few days of drawing the dragon like a shark, stalking Leaf, I decided to change the way I thought about the dragon. Making the dragon friendly helped ease the stress of not know what was causing the pain. Giving her a friendly name helped even more. Just her name made me smile. Deep down I knew this pain and growth was not cancer. The little voice or my intuition kept telling me to wait for the specialist. During those late nights and early mornings when I would lose the will to wait for the specialist, I’d contemplate changing the surgery date and simply “getting it out”. But by morning, I’d changed my mind again. The roller coaster of blood clotting pills combined with the Lupron induced menopause created the perfect storm in my brain and my body. The added bonus was that I was also experiencing all the side effects the pharmaceutical companies said MIGHT happen: blurry vision, stomach upset, heart palpitations, chest pain, dry mouth, lack of appetite, and lets not forget the anxiety; the never ending debilitating anxiety.
Diary entries were focused on blood clotting pills, blood loss and food. I could not exceed 8 pills in a 24 hour period. If I stopped or forgot, the bleeding would become excessive, so I needed to record it. I’d write the schedule in the morning assuming I took the pills on time but 6 or 7 hours later, invariably I’d forget and have to recalculate the pill schedule. My system is so sensitive, after years of issues I’ve come to compare it to a Ferrari, if you put the wrong fuel in, the engine stops working immediately.
Diary entry:
April 5th, 2021
9 am 2 pills
2:48 cup full
3 pm 2 pills
3:45 flooding
4 pm full cup
5 pm half cup
6:10 flooding and clot
6:40 full and clot
7:45 pm dinner - lamb, asparagus and sweet potatoes
8:30 magnesium and 2 progesterone + vitamins
9pm 2 pills - no bleeding
April 6th, 2021
Proposed pill consumption
3 am 2 pills
9 am 2 pills
3 pm 2 pills
9 pm 2 pills
Reality
8:30 am - 2 pills - full cup, 15 minutes later 1/2 cup
3:30 pm 2 pills - 1/2 cup
9:30 pm 2 pills - no bleeding
4 am 2 pills -full cup
I would try to extend the time between the pills to wean off them but each time I tried the blood loss increased. Waking up in the middle of the night to take pills seemed absurd but bodily functions do not turn off. Wake up with an alarm or clean up? Changing sheets and scrubbing while exhausted and weak is never a desired option. Waking to take two pills was easier.
With Covid still rampant, my living zones were the kitchen or the bedroom I grew up in: yoga, mediation, somatic movement, journalling, zooming and design work. Everything happened in the bedroom. The same room I would find myself on the floor at 4 am, crouched over a yoga bolster, focused on my breathing while I tried to distract myself from yet another stressful session. Why on the floor? Well, as one woman said, if you went back to bed, you’d wake up in what looked like a crime scene.
One particularly tough night I decided I could no longer live this way. I was going to call the surgeon. It had been a few nights of little sleep, combined with the drug side effects, and no follow up from my GP nor the surgeon while they had explicitly told me to contact them when the bleeding was excessive. It was obvious that I could not continue to live this way. That morning while trying to meditate through the nausea, that little voice in my head kept telling me to look at my phone. “No”, I said to myself and inhaled again, trying to focus and rid myself of the anxiety. “Look at your phone” it said again. “Ok, that’s odd. Its so incessant.” I said to myself, so I picked up the phone. On the screen was a +61 telephone number: someone from Australia was calling and since the phone was still in silent mode at 5:30 in the morning, I was not hearing the ring.
I answered. It was Stephanie calling from Melbourne, an old friend who I’d only recently discovered specialised in endometrial surgery.
“How are things?” she asked
“Good” I said and then paused. “Well, you know, stressful as you might imagine.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry you're going through this. Its not fun” she said sounding like she fully understood.
It was a quick chat but ironically it was powerful. She reiterated what so many kept telling me along with my inner voice. “I think you should delay. The laparoscopic surgery is really the best route, especially if they don’t know what they’re dealing with. Frequently we use specialised gynaecological pathologist when general pathology cannot diagnose or the results come back inconclusive. Given what you’ve told me, I don’t feel its cancer. Do what feels right, but in my experience if you’ve had 4 rounds of pathology and its still inconclusive, you’re probably not dealing with cancer and can wait. I use Lupron as well but only for a maximum of 3 injections, and then I insert a mirena. It takes a three months to be effective and can remain in for 5 years. Also I would add estrogen and progesterone while you’re having the lupron shots to mitigate the intense side effects.” Of course she was telling me this as a friend and not my doctor, which was why I appreciated the insight even more. After the phone call I googled the assisting surgeon for my current surgeon. The reviews were terrible. One patient wrote that they were still experiencing acute pain. His response was they would simply have to deal with it.
I’m going to wait.
I felt at peace after I made the decision to postpone. I called my surgeon at 9 am and left a message. She still had not called me back after my acute blood loss late last week.
Two days later the surgeon returned my call. “Hi Siobhan, I have a message to call you.” “Hi Doctor. Yes, I was bleeding excessively last week and you said to call.” I explained feeling dishearten that she did not call back, but I did not want to get upset with her since she was the only person currently overseeing my health. “We expected that to happen. What is happening now?” She asked. “I got it under control with the tranexamic acid but my eyesight is blurry and I’m having very acidic burps along with chest pain.” I explained. “If you can decrease the cyklokapron (tranexamic acid) it will help with those symptoms” she suggested. I paused “I’d like to postpone the surgery. I have an appointment with Dr. Singh on April 27th. They are going to do a pelvic ultrasound. Won’t I need an MRI for them to see what's happening?” I asked. “Not necessarily. They have a 3D ultrasound which is different from the regular ones. They can see quite a bit with it. Having said that I’m still not sure you’ll be able to hold off the surgery until he’s available. It may take up to a year for him to fit you on his list. I will put you on the my list for June. May surgeries have been cancelled due to Covid so I’m booking surgery for mid June. I have an opening on the 11th.” I did not know how to respond. “Ok, that sounds like a good option. “I really don’t think Dr. Singh will fit you in before August at the earliest. So let’s keep the June date until we know further. Let’s speak again after you’ve had the initial consultation.”
Blood loss PTSD accompanied by my surgeon who “did not think I’d make it” was not helping my stress levels. I went back to my ziva mantra’s:
My body know exactly how to heal itself.
My cells are strong.
This sickness is cleaning house so I can be even stronger.
Thank you body, thank you nature for the lessons this is teaching me.
I am open to receiving and incorporating these lesson.
I deserve this time to rest.
I deserve this time to heal.
I give myself permission to completely surrender to this experience because I know it is temporary.
I allow myself to experience any discomfort fully because I know the more I surrender to it, the faster I move through to the other side.
I’m already becoming stronger than I was before.
My body knows how to heal itself perfectly and quickly.
My healing is already in progress.
My healing is already in progress.
Can you have too much insight? If a doctor proposed the removal of your right hand would you not speak with everyone you could about what the outcome might be? One close friend yesterday commented that I was seeking too much insight. Odd, I thought.