As if my story ended with the PCOS life had to take a wicked turn. That beautiful little Christmas baby is older now and I wanted another child, as I told my story about her and her father passing away, I am now into the future in another relationship and the discussion of having another child is there. We know we will face battles, but lately I have been worn down, very tired and for some off reason sex is very painful now.
Back off to the doctors, they can’t figure out what’s wrong, go figure this is starting to become a pattern with doctors not knowing anything. Keep in mind I am being shipped off to Pittsburgh where some of the top doctors are. I have seen all types at this point and many different gynecologists, including a female who was ex marine and she was enough to put me off seeing gynecologist’s period. I swear she thought she could.
Off to a new doctor, who tells me everything I have sounds like Endometriosis. He decided drugs where the choice of treatment. I was given everything under the sun, but the biggest was Lupron shots, which I gave myself, it was horrid I ended up with so many side effects and his idea of treating those where MORE meds!!! I was on so much, I was run down and miserable and then I had a TIA, which is a mini stroke from all the medications. I was done, I went off them all and said I would suffer, but during the course of all this the Endo got worse and the pain was debilitating.
I ended up having to see a pain specialist who started me on Percodan, that’s basically Percocet without the acetaminophen in it, since I am allergic to it. For those that don’t know, acetaminophen is the main ingredient of Tylenol. When that stopped working they moved me to oxycontin, then to dilaudid and finally to a fentanyl patch. I was a drooling idiot, but I was pain free. I was also missing out on watching my daughter grow up, she was between the ages of 4 and 5 while all this was happening. I couldn’t even make it down a driveway without falling asleep and drooling from the fentanyl. Enough was enough, I decided I was going to let them do more surgery at this point, we are up to about 16 surgeries between the endometriosis and the PCOS so why not another to have them “scrape” the endometriosis out.
Now this is where my story gets a little crazy. I am admitted into the hospital, pre surgery and a couple comes into my room and asks to pray over me. At this point, I don’t care what religion comes into the room, if they want to pray so be it, I am in pain and I just want it to stop. They pray over me, the woman has her hand on my forehead the entire time. I am a little freaked by this, but Eh, whatever. I was raised Roman Catholic, later converted to Christian, but I can honestly say, while the prayers were of a Christian nature I had never heard anything like this before. It was also my first experience with someone talking in “tongue” which really freaked me out if you’re clueless about it.
Okay back to the morning of surgery, I am prepped I am ready to go; they still have me on some heavy meds so I am very groggy. I remember being wheeled down, but that’s it. When I woke up, I was still too medicated for the doctor to talk to me, so it wasn’t till that evening it comes into my room, sits down and says, well we have a problem, but it’s a good one. How is any problem a good one? I mean seriously, the word good and problem should never be in the same sentence.
So here is my good problem in a nut shell. When they went in to clean up the endometrioses, (oh and btw, it wasn’t just in the female areas, I had it also in a cavity in my back, on my kidneys, liver and stomach.) they found absolutely none!
Gasp! What? Now what’s wrong with me was my instant thought, how could I go from being the worst case the doctor ever saw to having absolutely none? Was it the power of prayer? Who knows, I have my own personal feelings on that, and don’t want to make this a religious post. But, they prayed, it’s gone and to this day I have never suffered from endometriosis again!
I was able to get pregnant straight out the gate, but sadly I lost the baby at 8 weeks. We had moved and I was seeing new doctors, the one I thought was good until I lost the baby and was crying and he decided to be rude and tell me “Oh well, it happens, get over it” How do you ever get over something like that, when you have been trying for years.
4 months after that I got pregnant again, I had a very harsh pregnancy and kept going through early labor. I was put on terbutaline to stop the contractions, at one point I had to be given shots of magnesium sulfate and let it be known that they where to save the baby over my own life, due to the fact this medication can have very bad effects on the mother and the mothers heart. Luckily we were fine, I suffer from heart problems now, that they think where aggravated by the magnesium and just made hereditary heart problems show up earlier then they would have.
I had so many early labor episodes, when I finally went in to have her nurse was sort of cold towards me and told me I was not in labor. She checked me and I was 1 centimeter and she was not even willing to call a doctor. She sent my husband down to get discharge papers. I was hitting the call bell screaming I had to push and she told me she would “humor me” and check. Well she checked me, and the baby was crowning, she had my husband called for to get back to labor and delivery stat, and she called my doctor finally, but he would never make it on time. I was seeing a high risk pregnancy doctor and a neo-natal specialist were supposed to be on call when I delivered. Due to this nurse’s action, the only person they could get there was a midwife, not knocking midwives, but she was not equipped to handle a delivery like mine with all the complication. She barely made it though; my daughter was delivered in a bed that was not prepped, by a nurse who kept demanding I not push. Sorry, women have been delivering babies for centuries and when its time, its time.
That little girl I was carrying is now 9 years old, active and for the most part healthy. She does have three forms of epilepsy, but, it’s managed with medicine. I would include a picture of her, but her father and I are divorced and our court order states her picture cannot be posted online, unless it’s private. You will just have to take my word on the fact she is one of the most beautiful kids in the world.
Do you think this story ends here? Hardly, I wish, but it doesn’t. This is just one more installment in the long battle I have had with infertility issues.
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Wow. You have gone through so much and had some horrible doctors!
If you are looking for some support from those who have had similar issues, I am a member of the Just Mommies forum. The TTC boards are great and there are separate boards for TTC with PCOS. (http://www.justmommies.com) I’m callista83 there. HUGS
Kathleen, Thank you for the url. I will gladly check it out! Also thank you so much for the kind remarks 🙂