Rocky Road isn't that sweet.

The past few days have been rather rocky for me, in terms of how I feel physically and mentally. As I'm writing this, I think I'm back on a more even keel, and I hope things can continue that way for a bit. I never know when I'm going to feel off in my head, and I wasted a lot of Sunday fixating on how I felt and if it means more than what my doctor said it does. Tuesday I was really bloated and had twinges under my bellybutton, my anxiety was out of control, and for the first time in a long time, my sister and I didn't have our weekly date. 

I realize I need to tell you what's going on with me or this blog isn't going to make any sense. I wanted to kind of ease you into all that happened to me, but after two posts, if I don't tell you, you won't know, and dropping breadcrumbs only gets you so far. This isn't a mystery novel. 

In my first post, I alluded to my troubles starting way back, as early as 2016, but I think what I was going through with my divorce and the man who would come to be my ex-fiancé, I could have shaken off with a lot more grace and aplomb if I hadn't had other things going on. 

My health troubles started in 2019, and I will aways remember the day in November when I was at Walmart with my sister and I needed more dryer sheets. They were out of the ones I normally buy, so unbeknownst to me and the fate of my life, I threw a box into my cart that I had never bought before. I don't want to get into trouble, don't know if I can say the name of the brand and not get sued for libel, but let's just say it had a fuzzy bear on the box and leave it at that. I didn't start using them right away, and I'm not sure of the exact timetable now, but let's say, early December or so, I opened the box. The too long, didn't read (TL;DR) version of that is that using them gave me bacterial vaginosis. A couple months after feeling shitty "down there" and not knowing why, I finally made myself go to the clinic. A midwife tested me and she told me I had BV. She put me on vaginal antibiotics and sent me home with the usual reminders not to use scented body lotion/body wash or take bubble baths, that kind of thing. The problem is, I could always use body lotion, and I took bubble baths regularly. I'd always had good vaginal health, never had a yeast infection before, and how I got the BV was a worrisome mystery. I wasn't having sex, didn't use sex toys, dirty or otherwise, and I was flummoxed. I don't blame my midwife for not being able to tell me--she didn't live my life--but she told me I couldn't get rid of BV without antibiotics and I didn't believe her. I figured if I could find out why I got it in the first place I could get rid of it, and that's what I did. 

I spent hours and hours and hours on women's forums, searching BV, reading other women's testimonials. I was reading one forum where they were talking about it, and about six pages in, a woman wrote that her problem started when she picked up a box of S****le, and it was like fireworks exploded in my brain. 

I was feeling so shitty by then, and not just my vagina, but in my head. My body was trying to tell me something wasn't right, and I was constantly fighting anxiety attacks. 

This was around the time when the pandemic hit and we were going into lockdown. I was considered an essential worker, and I still went in to work, but my daughter transitioned to going to school at home and everyone was dealing with a lot of stress and fear. Surprisingly, the pandemic didn't worry me too much. I didn't mind wearing a mask and I wasn't afraid of getting sick. Possibly my more personal issues had a lot to do with that, but the only thing that really bothered me was the possibility of running out of toilet paper. I never did, but not having access to any because the stores were always out wasn't a great feeling.

Anyway, so I figured out why I got BV in the first place, bought new panties, bought new sheets for my bed and washed my towels over and over hoping to get the residue off them because I couldn't afford to replace them. I went back to my midwife who swabbed me, and my BV test came back negative. She patted herself on the back and thought she was done with me. 

I was happy I managed to get rid of my BV, but it didn't make me feel better and for the three and a half years after that I thought those dryer sheets fucked up my vaginal pH. I started seeing a real gynecologist (after my midwife lied to me I never went back to her) and she recommended boric acid, which didn't help. To say the least, I was miserable. Even though I knew, or thought I knew, what was wrong with me, my anxiety didn't let up. I thought I was going to feel like that forever. In February of 2022, I talked to my gyno and we agreed I should get a hysterectomy. Me, because I thought not having periods anymore would help with my pH, and she okayed the surgery because I had fibroids that made my periods very painful. The surgery went well, I thought, but the preventive antibiotics gave me a yeast infection. Finally, I hoped that after I treated my yeast infection, I would get back to normal. 

I didn't. 

My mental health didn't get a break either, and I couldn't tolerate how my fiancé at the time was treating me. We'd had a rocky relationship since practically we first met, but I'd always given him outs because of his own mental health. While I was recovering from my surgery, he did something I couldn't forgive him for, and we broke up. I was trying to get better so I could go back to work (something I really needed to do before my paid time off ran out), and after feeling like garbage for two years with no end in sight, I had to protect myself and I told him we were done.  

It was stress I didn't need because no matter how crappy a relationship is, when it ends, they leave a hole in your life, but that's a post for another day. 

I healed from surgery, went back to work (because of the pandemic we were working from home at that point and while I had trouble transitioning, it was a blessing, too), and I still felt like crap. I think it was about six to eight months after my surgery I went back to my gyno, desperately hoping she could figure out what was happening. After she swabbed me for the 100th time (not really but it felt like it by then) she looked me dead in the eye and said, "I don't know what's wrong with you." I will never forget it. She didn't say she would try to find out, didn't offer to refer me to a specialist. I got dressed, went out to my car, and cried in the parking lot.

That was my lowest point. 

I suffered through for a while longer, and a friend at work relayed a story about another friend who had a friend who wasn't feeling well, made the rounds of the doctors here in Fargo, ND, and they couldn't tell her what was wrong with her, either. She didn't give up, went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN (about six hours from here) and they told her she had cancer. It blew me away that doctors here couldn't diagnose cancer of all things, and it got me thinking about my own predicament. Finally, it was in around October of 2023 that I called for my own appointment. I had to wait until February of this year, but it was worth it. She talked to me for an hour, gave me an exam, and knew what was wrong with me. Though there are other causes, I believe my skin reacted to the chemicals in the dryer sheets and the nurse practitioner I saw diagnosed me with vulva lichen. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lichen-sclerosus/symptoms-causes/syc-20374448

She also said that my ovaries were in overdrive which can happen after a hysterectomy, as they are still doing their job (popping out an egg) but then nothing happens which puts them into a panic. She put me on a medication to calm my ovaries down too. 

I left my seventy-minute appointment with two creams and a medication and hope for the first time in over four years. 

So fast forward to now. I'm done with the medication, which made me feel pretty good and stripped away a lot of the fatigue and other achiness, and the creams have decreased my symptoms by a lot. 

But because the medication made me feel better, I can feel other things now, like a twinge and hardness under my bellybutton, more than likely from my surgery where she made an incision, and a lot of bloating, maybe due to my ovaries adjusting to not being on the medication (it was a ninety-day supply) or maybe me being old and it's natural being this close to menopause. It's possible my surgery didn't go as well as I thought it did, or maybe it was the snow shoveling I was doing two days after my procedure when I should have been resting. Whatever the cause, there's something not quite right going on in my belly. The creams took away the itchiness and pain, but I'm still swollen and bruised down there, around my vagina and anus, and sitting, like I do for my day job and all my writing, doesn't feel the best after a while. 

I have an ultrasound before my follow-up appointment with my nurse practitioner at the end of the month, so if there's anything weird going on, at least I'll know. 

So that's where I am. Feeling better for the first time in years, and of course that would be true, because knowing what you're dealing with and having a treatment plan is always better than suffering from an unknown issue and not knowing if you're going to have to live that way forever, but I'm not feeling normal yet. I don't think there's anything serious going on--I'm not in pain--just some discomfort that could have a simple explanation. 

I keep reminding myself that I wasn't feeling well for four years, and I went through a lot of trauma during that time. Three months is nothing. I know that and remind myself of it. I wasn't feeling well for four years--it may take another four years to find my way back to a normal where I'm not thinking about how I'm feeling all the time. 

In the meantime, I have this blog to keep my mental health under control. I have a nurse practitioner who listens to me and knows what's going on with me, even if she is six hours away. She's a lot more than I had last year. Nothing completely devastating is happening, and after so many years of being in a continual fight or flight mode, not dealing with things like my car being involved in a hit and run, or a fiancé treating me like crap, or my son needing surgery to remove a cyst in his back that would lay him out on his stomach for a year, or my daughter struggling to get the hang of school in her bedroom, or the loss of our three cats in four years' time, maybe my mind doesn't know how to understand that things aren't terrible anymore. Yeah, I'm still dealing with a lot of loss and mourning like that is usually a constant, no matter how much time goes by, but it fades. And it is. 

I'll keep you posted because I need a place to dump my stuff. 

Ice cream not included.