The revolt started almost right away. The hot flashes went to nuclear level. I was the woman who would have ripped off her
clothes in public just to cool off. I
was the woman who would dump water on my head and have the house so cold
everyone was blue-lipped and shivering.
I kept reading about surgical menopause. ‘Hot flashes are normal,’ I told myself.
I called the surgeon who said, “Hot flashes are normal. If they get extreme call back.”
Extreme.
Oh. Okay.
I tried as hard as possible to reconcile feeling like
someone is pouring boiling oil on you is normal. “Not extreme.
Not extreme,” I told myself.
Poor Mr. Jenny didn’t say anything. He was frightened of the mood swings, I
suspect. Or just afraid to touch a
woman who would yell, “You’re too hot…get away from me!” He figured out really quickly that I wasn’t
complimenting him and/or flirting.
Sigh.
Then cold flashes started alternating with the hot. I cracked a molar from my teeth rattling
together.
After I had it pulled, I called the doctor back.
"Seriously? Is this ‘normal’? My teeth are chattering so hard I’ve cracked
a molar…five minutes later it feels like someone is pouring boiling oil on me? Is THIS normal? Is THIS extreme enough?”
The doctor conceded that, “Yes, it might be a bit out of the
norm.”
He prescribed estrogen.
And Progesterone. Patches. Pills.
Nothing helped. If anything, the
hot and cold got more extreme.
He sent me to Tucson to a specialist who gave me some kind
of awful injections that made me throw-up for days.
After the treatment I could barely move and my heart started
feeling weird.
I went to my family doctor.
“Weird how?” he asked.
A few seconds later he was doing a portable EKG. “Wow, this is very unusual arrhythmia. How long has this been going on?”
“Since you sent me for that hysterectomy,” I told him. He dismissed any connectivity with a wave of
his hand, and wrote a referral into a heart hospital for evaluation.
He gave me pills to help with the discomfort.
When my heart went into beating really slowly it felt quite
painful inside my chest and when it was racing I felt like I was going to pass
out, so even though the medication made me feel dizzy and sick, I took the pain
pills
The heart hospital was puzzled. They did tests. They poked.
They prodded. I wore an electronic
tracking halter device for a week.
Nothing showed up. They did more
tests. They made me wear the halter
monitor for a month. Nothing showed up.
I guess I should clarify here that nothing showed up WITH MY
HEART.
However, lots more physical symptoms decided to show up in
my body. My hair started falling out and
my skin started aging rapidly. The
headaches grew worse along with the joint pains. Tremors in my hands and arms made it
difficult to even hold a glass of water.
I also began experiencing bone cramps…like Charlie horses inside the
bones of my legs, spine and pelvis. The
bone cramps were absolutely excruciating.
I would wake up almost every night screaming even though I had tried drugging
myself into oblivion with pain and sleeping pills.
I would scream until I grew hoarse…and then the cramps would
go away for a few hours or a few days.
The doctors scratched their heads. They increased the pain medication. They send me to a rheumatologist and another
endocrinologist.
It seemed that each week the symptoms got worse with test
after test yielding no information.
The heart doctor suggested we shock my heart to re-start a
healthy rhythm, my main doctor ordered more painful tests at a neurologist and
my OB/Gyn surgeon suggested I try yet another, stronger, hormone patch.
Almost literally.
The bone cramps and pain and heart arrhythmia showed up day
and night. I actually feel clammy even
now writing this at the remembrance of that level of agony.
I recall sitting at our Accountants office with several
people and my husband when I got a horrible bone cramp. Mr. Jenny saw me turn white and he started to
help me out of the chair. Yeah. Not a cool thing in a business meeting. With my husband’s help I stumbled out of the
meeting and into the hall. I yanked open
a closed door and stepped inside. I
tried to muffle my screams of pain into my arm.
Mr. Jenny tried to help but there
was nothing to be done. The cramps were
a roller coaster ride through hell until the pain released you. Minutes passed. My hair was dripping sweat and probably
sticking straight out. I could barely
walk.
The secretary came to the door and knocked. When I was finally able to look around I saw
we were in a storage closet stacked with paper and files.
Ummm… awkward.
With wide eyes the secretary asked, “Are you okay?”
“Actually, I’m not,” I replied.
We went home.
Please remember I’m not telling this to boohoo. I want to share this INFORMATION with
you. This is just an example of how
awful my life had become after the hysterectomy. Even on the ‘good’ days when it didn’t feel
like my face was getting smashed by a hammer and my heart was ticking away
fairly well, the bone cramps were my nemesis.
They came at will and they owned my life. Some days I would be screaming in pain ten
times…other days it might only be a small pelvic cramp.
More time elapsed. More
pain pills. More sleeping pills. More tests.
More poking and prodding and wracking up zillions of dollars in medical
testing.
I tried everything that every doctor told me to do with no
improvement.
I finally ended up ‘off the medical grid’ with anyone I
prayed might help me. My husband called
those practitioners ‘voo doo’ doctors.
Perhaps they were, but I didn’t care.
I was so desperately in pain I tried following every lead to every strange
person that might heal me. The
quirkiest among them, perhaps, was a tiny, little French woman who had me eat
primarily liquefied watermelon juice.
I’m not denigrating ‘voo doo’ doctors. I saw and experienced some pretty freaky
stuff including levitation (or maybe I was just hallucinating from all the pain
and sleep pills I was taking to survive).
Some of these ‘cures’ actually did help for a short time.
But after an hour or a day or a week, all the symptoms
returned full force.
My health continued to decline until one fateful day I
consented to go a pain clinic.
The doctor at the pain clinic dismissed the heart arrhythmia,
dismissed the cold and hot flashes, dismissed the tremors and the headaches and
said, “Aha! We can help with your bone
cramps and joint pain!” He talked a lot
about … well… a lot of stuff but I was in such misery I could barely hear
anyone talking to me.
The new doctor decided that I need some nerve testing on my
spine before they could make recommendations.
To be totally candid, even after years of being poked,
prodded and tortured I wasn’t prepared for the pain level of the spinal
testing. At one point during the
procedure the bone in my thigh started cramping. “Don’t move,” the tech cautioned. I bit into my forearm trying to hold still. Yeah.
That test still gives me the heebie jeebies.
After the test, I was injected with something to block all
the pain from my waist down. A few
minutes later I could feel the bone cramps but the level of pain was reduced substantially.
After sitting in recovery for an hour, I got up quite
gingerly to find that things didn’t hurt that much in my pelvic bones and legs.
Sure I still had hand tremors and the nerves in my face were
jumping and my head was exploding, but some of the pain was gone!
I was so happy.
I remember smiling broadly at Mr. Jenny. Sure, I still felt awful but it was a BETTER
awful. I grinned like a fool all the way
home.
I think I was even grinning in my sleep until around
midnight when the nerve blocks wore off.
I realized they hadn’t ‘fixed’ anything, they’d only ‘hidden’
it.
I cried my pillow soggy that night. I begged my husband to kill me. I’m not even using dramatic license
here. I got on my knees and begged him
to kill me.
He did.
The end.
Okay. That was funny...right?
Ha!
He didn’t really kill me but I was furious that he wouldn’t.
When we returned to the pain clinic the next day they were
happy. “This is good news,” they said, “We’re
just going to cut a nerve or two in your spine and you’ll feel a lot better.”
“Ummm…” my husband
and I said simultaneously. “Ummm….cut a
nerve or two? Is that a good idea? I mean…ummm…”
“Oh yeah. We do it
all the time…blah, blah, blah…let’s schedule this for next week…blah, blah,
blah…”
I didn’t hear a word they said. I was stuck on the word ‘cut a nerve or two
in your spine’.
I finally interrupted the doctor. “Look, I have kind of a weird medical history
of surgeries and procedures NOT going as planned. My body is wired wrong or something. Couldn’t this get really screwed up?”
“Not to worry…we’re good at what we do (and admittedly they
were quite highly recommended) and the risk of permanent paralysis is low and…”
I walked out of the examination room. I’d like to say I strode out with great
determination, but the truth is I hobbled out in great pain.
Mr. Jenny joined me in the car and we just kept looking at
each other. “How did this happen? How did I get here? I can’t let someone cut
nerves in my spine.” I was crying hysterically.
I cried all the way home.
I couldn’t stop crying.
I googled for answers on the internet…crying.
I made myself sick crying.
And then I got ticked off.
Really, really ticked off.
My life was gone, everything hurt almost all day…every day,
I was depressed, I’d physically aged about 10 years in a period of months…
I was mad as hell.
It was pretty dramatic at our house that day.
And…to be honest…there was a lot of swearing.
I grabbed the car keys and told Mr. Jenny I was going for a
drive.
I drove about a half a mile and went into a natural grocery
store. This store had a huge selection
of homeopathic and naturopathic remedies and medicines.
I went up to the health desk. I’m sure I looked like a mad woman…grey
faced, shaking in pain, crying my eyes out.
“I need help! I need
someone to help me!” I think I yelled
it. I think I scared the kind woman
behind the counter.
She came around toward me and gently took my hand.
“What’s wrong? What
can I help you with?” she enquired.
I babbled and cried and sobbed and told her all my physical
symptoms. She gave me Kleenex and
listened intently.
“I don’t think I can help you,” she finally said in a quiet
voice. “Go next door and talk to the
owner of the nutrition store. She is
really good with issues like this.”
I gathered my soggy Kleenex and walked the short distance.
The owner came to help me right away.
I cried and cried and told her all of my physical
symptoms. She guided me to a small
in-store book section, and started handed me various books.
After I had four in my hands she stopped and looked at me.
Really, really looked at me.
“Have you had a hysterectomy?” she asked in a kind voice.
I told her the surgical staple story.
“So…they removed both ovaries?” she clarified.
“Yes, they did.”
One by one she took each book back.
She held up a finger to wait and disappeared for a brief
moment.
When she came back, she handed me a business card.
“Call this doctor,” she said firmly. “Call her right away. I think she can help you.”
I drove the brief distance home to find Mr. Jenny pacing in
front of the house.
He started to yell at me for running off and worrying him.
I told him the story of the health food store people. I showed him the business card.
“Great, just great,” he said. “Another ‘voo-doo’ doctor.”
We stared at each other for a few long moments.
In that moment I realized that I wasn’t the only one that
had lost a life. My husband had lost
his best friend and companion. Even
though I was the one suffering the physical pains, he was suffering just as
much.
“Should I make an appointment?” I asked him through my
tears.
“Yeah, make an appointment,” he said hesitantly.
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