Sick

I read a blog post last year about the coming out moments everyone has in their lives – those moments when you finally find the strength to tell the world something deeply personal about yourself. It doesn’t matter what it is, just that it makes you vulnerable. It’s very hard to do. I’ve been avoiding my own “coming out” for almost a year now.

I’m sick. But I’m even more sick of lying about being sick. So here it goes. I won’t bore you with the detailed test-by-test analysis, although if you’re interested, you should feel free to ask.

As of right now (the doctors just keep finding more things wrong, so I expect the list to grow) I have been diagnosed with:

• Endometriosis (where endometrial lining grows outside the uterus)
• Adenomyosis (where endometrial lining penetrates the uterine wall and grows inside the muscle)
• Uterine fibroids (benign growths in the uterine muscle wall)
• Uterine polyps (benign growths in the endometrium)
• A blocked fallopian tube (probably from the endometriosis)
• An extremely anteverted uterus (its flipped nearly upside down)
• Infertility

In the past nine months, I have had these tests:

• 2 regular ultrasounds
• 6 transvaginal ultrasounds
• 2 histosonograms (saline injected into the uterus)
• 1 histosalpingogram (fluoroscopic dye injected into the uterus)
• 1 D & C (dilation of the cervix and removing all tissue inside the uterus, thankfully under general anesthesia)
• Upwards of 15 blood tests
• Four urine tests

I have taken these prescription medications:

• Vicodin
• Norco
• Percoset
• Flagyl
• Cipro
• Ibprofen
• Lysteda
• Dilaudid
• Ativan

Why am I telling you this? Because I’m sick of lying about doctor appointments and surgeries. Because I’m sick of people asking, “When are you and your husband having kids?” I’m sick of saying, around the lump in my throat, “Oh soon. Probably when I’m out of law school.”

But most importantly I’m telling you because I’ve been this sick since I was thirteen years old. And no one listened. Doctors put me on estrogen-based contraceptives to control my symptoms that ultimately made my underlying conditions worse. They told me, “take some Advil” and that I must not be using tampons right since no one bled through super plus in an hour. They were all wrong. It just took a trip to the ER two days before a final exam and about ten follow-up appointments to prove it. And guess what? Now it might be too late.

If a woman you love tells you Advil doesn’t help her cramps. If she throws up or has to miss school every month. If she stains the sheets and her clothes on a regular basis. It is NOT normal. She will not grow out of it. And if you let her problem go unchecked for fourteen years, she might be scarred too badly to ever have children. She might sit in her doctor’s office holding her husband’s hand when she is 27 years old while the doctor recommends a hysterectomy.

Yes, the tests are awful. I recently had three doctors spend 30 minutes digging around in me with a speculum because my uterus was so far out of normal position that they couldn’t find my cervix. When they finally injected the fluoroscopic dye into my uterus, the pain literally took my breath away. And that’s coming from a woman whose cramps are so bad even Percocet only dulls them. But you know what hurts worse than those tests? Seeing my own heartache reflected in my husband’s face as we pass a happy family pushing a stroller in Disneyland knowing that will probably never be us.

At my last appointment, my doctor told me that our only chance of getting pregnant would be the most expensive form of IVF (called ICSI). And even that had only a slim chance of actually working. It’s also not covered by our insurance, and costs almost $15,000. So please, don’t ask me when my husband and I are going to have kids. Right now the answer is somewhere between when we win the lottery and never.

If you want to know more about the conditions I’ve been diagnosed with, I’ll let you Google them. But be advised you might get graphic pictures and stories. If you’d like to ask me about any of this, feel free to do that too. I’m done being embarrassed that my body doesn’t work right. And I’m done making up lies about my treatments.

I am sick. And I don’t want to lie about it anymore.