Pelvic Pain Part 2.......cuz SO MUCH.

I got my IUD out in August of 2012.  All excited--we were going to start trying to make a baby!  Weaned off my antidepressants.  Then, in October I had a flareup on Columus Day weekend.  I didn't think much of it at first........until it lasted......and lasted.......and lasted.......and never went away.  I kicked myself for not taking probiotics every day for the past four years.  Obviously my body needed them.  I began to panic.  Like, really freak out.  Being newly unmedicated for my depression made it even worse.  I would stand in front of all the yeast/other infection stuff in the pharmacy and feel like I had been catapulted back to that nightmare from four years ago where I would stand in the same place wondering the same thing--what's wrong with me?  I took probiotics.  No help.  It seemed to get worse and worse.  And then I got my period.  Holy shit, the pain.

Let's talk about that pain for a second.  First of all let me say that I am not a baby when it comes to pain.  I am one of those people who can breathe my way through things, walk things off etc.  This pain condition was more painful than anything I've ever experienced in my entire life.  Getting my period was like having a knife in my cervix.  Other times it felt like the world's biggest speculum was shoved up inside of me as far as it would go and opened as wide as possible up at the top.  The top was the worst part.  Sometimes I had pin and needles on various parts of my vulva.  Sometimes it would feel like my whole vulva was burning.  I would be convinced that this time I would go to the bathroom and be able to seem something--inflamation, redness, anything.  But no, everything always looked normal.  Then I would touch it.  And it didn't hurt.  Touching and poking didn't hurt.  It hurt just........being.  Existing.  (That's when I got the inkling it was nerve pain.)  And sex--out of the question.  Sex itself didn't hurt too much, but afterwards it was like someone had taken knives and sliced me up inside.  But I digress......

I went back to Dr. K's office.  Why did I do this you might ask?  I don't know.  I guess because I felt like he had figured it out the first time and they were supposedly so good.  Well I couldn't see him but I saw on if his associates.  And she--you guessed it--found nothing.  I ugly cried for a long time before realizing that I could not go back there.  He had told me I was crazy.  Everyone in that office thought I was crazy because I was there so much four years ago.  I couldn't--wouldn't--put myself through that again when I was in this much pain and KNEW something was wrong.

I decided to look up a new doctor.  I found someone close by in my town and went to see her so hopefully.  She was "really understanding" and seemed to have a great bedside manner (I say "seemed" and use quotes because when I thought about it, she would say about ten thousand different things and then ask me what I thought.  I needed her to think, not me.  She also said, "well, it could be thisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthis or this" to the point where it was not helpful, just scary.)  She did cycle day 3 bloodwork on me and then guess what?  We got hit by a SuperStorm called Sandy.  The whole state just SuperStopped.  It was horrible.  I was lucky enough to live far enough north that we got the least of it--people down the shore lost everything.  We lost power for eight days.  After three days cooking noodles on the gas grill outside my in-laws in a neighboring town got their power back, so we packed up the cats and went to stay with them.  Naturally I could not get ahold of my doctor's office to get the information I needed about my bloodwork.

After about a week and half, when the state had started to come back to life I received word from her that the bloodwork was all fine.  She didn't know what was wrong but she was going to think it over.  She didn't get back to me for a while and whenever I called they would tell me she was still thinking it over.  I got my period and felt that stabbing pain in my cervix again.  I went to see her after I was done bleeding, it so much pain I was sick to my stomach.  She called me back a few days later and told me I had bacterial vaginosis, but that she didn't feel that was the whole story.  She wanted to think it over and ask a colleague what he thought.  Frustrated, I enlisted the help of my chiropractor.  I went into his office and burst into tears.  He gave me some supplements, an adjustment, told me to cut out dairy, grains and sugar and told me he knew he could help me.  I hoped he was right, and over the course of the next few months I would find myself feeling hopeful and refreshed every time I left his office, yet by the time I reached my door I would be depressed again.  I knew deep down that there was something really wrong that all the alternative therapies in the world wouldn't be able to touch.  I felt like I was getting an infection every time I would get my period.  It was starting to become painful to stand for too long (bad news for a music teacher on a cart who worked at 2-3 three schools every single day).  And my doctor, after two and a half weeks, was still "waiting to hear back from her colleague".

It was my mom who finally took matters into her own hands.  She lives in California but we are very close.  I was calling her in tears all the time and had gotten to the point where I was starting to literally contemplate whether or not I could live like this for the rest of my life.  Every Google search produced women talking about "vulvodynia" that they had lived with for 30 years.  She found a new doctor at Weill-Cornell.  This doctor specialized in "vaginitis" and seemed like a good fit for me.  It was early December at this point, and it had been about two months.  (That seems like a short time now in retrospect, but when you're in that much constant pain, unable to have sex with your husband, wanting to get pregnant--it was like eternity.)  I went to see Dr. P with so much hope in my heart.  But I'm not even going to bore you with the details.  It went like this:

Me: I am in pain in my vagina.  I think I am getting infections with my period but I can't confirm that because I haven't been tested every month.  I don't know what's wrong.  My first doctor told me I was crazy.

Dr. P: okay.  Well from what I see here everything looks good.

Me: HOLY SHIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT FUCKING HURTS PLEASE STOP DOING THAT!!!!

Dr. P: I'm twisting your uterus in my fingers.

Me: WELL CAN YOU PLEASE STOP???

Dr. P (after examination is said and done): Well, I can't see anything wrong.  We'll see what the labs say (I could tell her what the labs would say--normal everything just like always).  You know, these things, they're annoying but there's nothing really wrong.  Why don't you just go ahead and get pregnant and we'll take it from there.

Me: ::blink blink::  JFC.

I'm telling her that I can't have sex because it hurts so much and she's telling me to go ahead and "get pregnant".  I was deflated.  The holidays came and went.  My mom came to visit and I actually started to feel better.  I thought for a minute that everything would be okay.  But as soon as school started again it started right back up (which of course led to everyone saying to me, "oh it's stress!").  My mom told me about this place in the City she had found out about called SoHo OBGYN that specialized in this type of thing.  She ordered me a book written by one of the doctors called Healing Sexual Pain.  I became hysterical at the idea of going there because this doctor was big time--if I had to see her it meant that something was really wrong........I was scared.  I suddenly had the idea to post about my situation on The Bump, the online pregnancy forum I had been a part of since I got my IUD out.  And this one thing changed the course of my whole situation.

continued in Part 3