Six Months Later

Chronic health problems, especially undiagnosed, are indescribably horrible. It's something you could only understand if you've experienced it. I don't want to complain, only explain. I want the people in my life to understand what is happening

I am still struggling quite a bit but I've been keeping busy and pushing through. I've been learning how to live in spite of pain instead of working so hard to get rid of it. Some days I feel so on top of things and feel like I can accomplish anything and then the very next day I don't know if I will make it.

Since the surgery, my stomach pain has completely gone away! I am so happy that my OB listened to me, it saved me. I have been able to eat and gain some weight.

The body aching that started in November hasn't gone away though. I manage it with pills, lots of pills.

Sometimes I hardly notice it but I have flare-ups that just set me back for days. Like I said though, I am learning so much about pushing through. Forcing myself out of bed and feeding the babes, cleaning, cooking, playing. That is an awesome day for me! It's hard to explain but I feel like I am trying to do everything while under water. Normal movement causes aching like I've been exercising non-stop.

Most of the time, the aching is in my back. It doesn't feel like an injury, it feels like I have the flu but on my spine. On bad days, I feel it all over. I also twitch non-stop as soon as I lay down and try to hold still. I take a muscle relaxer that really helps me to sleep and I have been sleeping well since January. It has helped a lot to be on a good sleeping schedule.

Weekends are the time I struggle the most. Dave isn't home much during the week so as soon as I can get help from him, I crash. All the pain I've been pushing through during the week catches up to me and it hurts to move. I've missed so much church and I cry when Dave and the kids get all dressed up and go without me.

It's strange though, I have had more spiritual experiences lately than in my life put together before I got sick. I depend on Heavenly Father so differently now. I have changed so much.

I have struggled with feeling abandoned by Him. No matter how many prayers and blessings, I can't get a concrete answer. All I want in the world is just a way to fix this and function! I feel like I've been given everything in life that I've ever asked for but my ability to enjoy and cultivate it has been taken away. You know those stories about what happens if you sell your soul? You get what you want but it's a sick, twisted version of it. That's kind of how I feel. I've wondered what I did to deserve this. I've met so many people who are having similar experiences though and I learned that this isn't about deserving pain. It's an incredibly difficult way to build character, learn compassion, understand the atonement and it's (kind of) a blessing.

I read a really neat experience of a man named Jacob who wrote about the worst struggles he has had in his life. He felt so abandoned and alone that he was doubting everything that he'd ever believed. He said it was easier to believe there was no God whatsoever than to believe that God was there and silently watching him suffer without offering some sort of hope or relief. This is the conclusion of what he wrote:

"I could not rid myself of God’s presence but perhaps his constant presence was reducible to essentially this: that there could be no words God could have given me, no explanations for my suffering, no reasons why he could or could not intervene, even if there were in reality such reasons. Theoretically, I cannot know with certainty that there were not reasons on some level, though I strongly believed that nothing could explain it all away. But to provide me with them, even if they existed, would have been to betray my suffering by justifying it. There is unspeakable suffering that simply, worlds without end, cannot be justified with reasons–it is unspeakable. I do not want to compare my suffering with the suffering of so many others, but my suffering, for me, could not be spoken. It could not be painted or sung. It could not be brought down on engraved tablets from a mountain. Nevertheless, perhaps it could be communed with. What, I asked myself, was God actually doing as I was suffering? What was God doing while so many others of his children moaned and wept under the weight of their burdens? What was he doing while his beloved son cried out for confirmation that he had not been abandoned? Communion comes from the Greek, and it means “fellowship.” For the first time I felt that whatever else was happening, whatever reasons and laws were being followed that I was ignorant of (and, frankly, wanted to remain ignorant of), God was in communion with me in my suffering, my fellow-sufferer, the one whom Enoch saw would weep over his children, but did not, could not,  hide his eyes from them. At last, something of what I can only say was the Holy Spirit finally penetrated me–I had come to know that God was there, silently and immovably there. But now I knew he was was also weeping."

It's been such a roller coaster and I read this when I was very down. The entire story is here: http://bycommonconsent.com/2012/05/13/deaths-and-rebirths-part-1-the-descent/. It was so comforting to read about his struggles and pain. It made me feel better to see that others feel doubts while in the midst of suffering and that it is possible to overcome those doubts.

When I make it to church and the temple, I feel so completely at peace. I feel whole. It's a feeling I'd never had before because I had never been without. I am grateful for the lessons I have learned and the things I am forced to work through.

Anyway, back to my health situation, I met with a Women's Health specialist last week. She believes that endometriosis is the culprit of everything I am still experiencing. I have wondered that as well and I think she knows what she is talking about. She gave me progesterone hormone pills to try to regulate my system and on Thursday I am going in for a Mirena IUD. She told me that it's an off-label use but it has been shown to significantly decrease pain and growth of endometriosis. She said that after a few months, my body should start recovering. The aching and twitching are a side effect of long-term pain that has worn me down and I will start recovering. She has seen my situation before! I was bawling in her office. It will give me the benefits of a hysterectomy without making a permanent decision right now. I feel very optimistic!

Things are definitely most intense during my cycle. It's always when I feel most out of control. I had a miscarriage in February. I was only five weeks along and I knew something was wrong from the start. I was nervous that the next ten months would consist of my writhing in pain while someone else raised my kids. I didn't want that but we would have figured it. A week later, an ovarian cyst ruptured  when I bent over to pick up Rachel. I think this IUD will help a lot and I'm ready for the next phase of life.