In This Storm

My monthly cycles began at 11.

I don’t remember when the cramps began, but it was something like thirteen seconds after menarche.

I just didn’t feel *good*.

Or *right*.

But how is an eleven-year-old supposed to know what’s “normal” when most women don’t know what’s *really* “normal” pain during a period?

At one point in time a family member led me to believe cramps were *my* fault because of my diet and lack of exercise. Whether she said it outright I don’t remember. I clearly remember the implication though.

She was wrong.

I haven’t had the “gold-standard” laprascopy yet to prove it, but it was probably the beginnings of endometriosis.

The lack of exercise didn’t help.

And my diet didn’t help.

(Though let’s be honest — a twelve, thirteen, fourteen-year-old with crazy mood swings and wild cravings left to her own devices most of the time and dependent upon what’s in the house at the moment doesn’t always make the best choices…she wants to feel better and sometimes, sad as it sounds, Twinkies may make said girl feel better at some strange level….)

But having symptoms of endometriosis was not my fault.

Indeed, having endo, if I do, was not my fault.

It just *was*.

But no one knew.

(A note for any readers who might occasionally take their own health for granted and even, unknowingly get a little self-righteous about it: I seriously could have done without the guilt laid on me by someone I adored.)

(Not to self for future reference: A twelve, thirteen, fourteen year-old girl needs a heating pad, some tender words, and heaps of loving kindness. She needs healthy food in the pantry and refrigerator that she can just grab when she feels horrid. Even better - some wholesome and healthy soup brought to her on a tray with a molasses cookies on the side. And much affection…)

Everyone has always told me I had a low tolerance for pain. Even back before middle school. I am beginning to believe that maybe I have actually always had a relatively high tolerance for pain and perhaps no one had any idea how much pain I was experiencing. Not that they didn’t care, but maybe they really didn’t have any idea.

By the time I was a senior in high school the monthly cramps were just something that were a part of my life. I might not do anything social during that time of the month, but school was my sanctuary and I vastly preferred being miserable at school to being miserable at home. Since I never threw up with my cramps (thank you Lord for such an unnecessary kindness), I went. But I spent lots of “free periods” and “lunch periods” sitting in dark, unused band practice rooms.

When I was seventeen I had a bunionectomy (exostectomy and Myerson/Ludloff osteotomy). It was the most painful experience of my life. (I will, quite honestly, wear horribly ugly shoes or go barefoot the rest of my life before anyone will touch my other bunion.)

I always measure the amount of pain I am in compared to the days following that surgery. If the bunionectomy was a ten (more like eleven) on a scale of one to ten, my first experience of childbirth was an eight altogether. Though blessedly short, the second was a nine. Except when the pain broke through the epidural (I’m told that can happen when you go from 3 to 10 cm in an hour and a half) on one side of my body, and then it was probably a ten for about forty-five minutes.

Why talk about foot surgery in this post about endo? Because it was then that I learned a trick for managing my monthly pain with OTC meds. It truly changed my life for the better. For a few years anyway.

My doctor prescribed something for the pain after surgery. I don’t remember what it was, but it made me loopy. Remember how invested I was in school? Well, this was my senior year and I didn’t want to miss a minute of it, in pain or not. The pain was too great to get out of bed without the meds, but I couldn’t hobble up and down flights of stairs at school loopy. (I’ve never been very coordinated unmedicated.)

The same doctor also shared an OTC remedy with me: Advil. Four Advil at a time - but no more than sixteen in twenty-four hours. And only for the very worst of pain. I distinctly remember him writing the number “16″ on a pad of paper and circling it. (Now, I am not recommending this to *anyone* and it has been years since I took so much medication without doctor’s orders.) But at the time, I got a little slice of my life back

I recovered from foot surgery, but once a month I remembered that “magic number 16.”

On the first day or two of my period I would take four Advil at a time if I were at home (it made me sleepy). I could take three and manage to go to school, but even at seventeen and eighteen I knew better than to drive much on that much medicine. (Which is ridiculous in retrospect given I would drive “under the influence” of alcohol… Sorry, Mom… Not your fault… Completely rebellious *me*…)

I continued to use this trick in college. My cramps were getting worse, even with taking birth control pills. (I was a lost soul, still.) But my periods weren’t as heavy and didn’t last as long so I didn’t cramp for as long. Still, I regularly skipped classes monthly and hibernated with my Advil bottle a couple of days each month.

The first time I heard “endometriosis” was as a sophomore in college. My roommate “had endometriosis” and had this loverly bottle of prescription pain meds to take each month. When I asked what endo was she told me it “meant she had bad cramps,” hence being on birth control pills and that much-envied-on-my-part bottle of prescription medication. Even then I remember thinking how ironic it was that *she* had this disease and was taking these meds and *I* was completely laid out several days a month with cramps.

And at the beginning of my junior year I “found Jesus.”

Which is completely inaccurate, because honestly He’d been chasing me for two decades, scooping me up mess after mess, and really it was just that at twenty I fell into a heap on my bottom bunk and simply Gave. Up.

I didn’t *do* anything.

I didn’t “accept” anyone or anything - except for my absolute inability to live life one day longer the way I had been.

I didn’t “ask Jesus into my heart.”

Invite Him to live in me?

I could not resist Him for one moment more.

Asking and inviting seem so proper.

So dignified.

I was not dignified.

I was desperate.

I begged and pleaded: “If you are who you say you are…”

Talk about faith as tiny as a mustard seed.

If I did anything that night it was that I *stopped*.

I stopped fighting.

I stopped trying.

I stopped insisting on my way.

(Sort of. Because honestly, eighteen years later I still struggle with insisting on my way much too often.)

And the next morning, like a newborn opening her eyes for the first time to this world gone crazy, I crawled out of that bottom bunk a new creation and blinked.

And yawned.

I was exhausted.

I was excited.

I was a mess.

But I was a new creation.

I cut apart my fake ID.

And I flushed the birth control pills down the drain.
(Don’t flush those, by the way. Terrible for our water supply.)

But I still had this (what we now realize is probably)
endometriosis…