OHS Sucks.

Well, prepare yourselves, for this will be another in a long line of 'poor me' posts. I feel like dogshit. The OHS has gotten progressively worse and worse since Sunday. Sunday after the IUI and Monday, I pretty much just felt my ovaries - felt how big they were, felt them everytime I walked, felt them when I stood up or sat down, and as aforementioned, when I had to urinate. Tuesday this progressed into feeling like my whole midsection was one big cramp, which I could feel all the way across my belly and through my lower back. It was unrelenting, but bearable. On Wednesday morning I woke up and noticed that after I peed.....I didn't feel any sense of relief. I walked into my kitchen to let the dog out onto the deck, and by the time I got back to the bedroom I was in really bad pain. I discovered that the only thing that made the pain relent, at all, was if I laid on my right side. I was huffing and moaning to beat the band on Wednesday morning, and finally R convinced me to call the RE's office. Dr. D told me to get dressed and come to the office - he'd work me in, between other patients.

It was all I could do to stand up in the shower long enough to get the shampoo out of my hair - I had to take several breaks while getting dressed to come lay down again to let the pain recede a little bit. I rode to the doctor's office with R driving as fast as he could, and me stretched out across the backseat trying to get some relief.

Dr. D showed us my ovaries on ultrasound (from the outside, thankfully, no wanding on this visit) and confirmed that they indeed were both the size of grapefruits. His basic attitude was that he was not at all surprised that I was in pain. He said that he was not concerned about ovarian torsion (where your enlarged ovary can twist on itself, cutting off it's own blood supply), because he said that if that were happening, I wouldn't be able to speak, or sit up, or stand, or do much of anything other than scream in agony. If torsion happened, he said that the only thing to do would be to call an ambulance and meet him at the hospital.

He asked me if I'd been eating and drinking. I said no, I haven't felt like doing either of those things at all. He said I didn't HAVE to eat, but I did have to drink. He said to go get Gatorade on the way home. He also gave me a prescription for Percoset. I honestly don't know how I would have made it this far without it. I've been going through periods every now and then - once around 4am last night, once around 12pm today, where the pain just absolutely would not go away, would not subside no matter what position I contorted myself into. I shudder to think how bad it would have been if the Percoset wasn't at least taking the edge off of it.

So, Dr. D made me promise I'd call him this morning and let him know how I was doing. I left a message basically saying that I wasn't any worse, but neither did I feel any better. I'm nauseous, everytime I stand up and/or drink Gatorade the nausea gets worse. I told him I was scared to death of running out of Percoset, bc I didn't know how I would bear the pain without them. (He didn't give me any refills on the measly 24 pills he prescribed yesterday.)

His nurse called back this afternoon and said that Dr. D had gotten my message, and was OK with my progress report (?) and that he thought maybe I'd feel better if he sent me to get some kind of special, high falutin' ultrasound scan that could rule out ovarian torsion for certain. The nurse proceeded to tell me that she had gotten the radiology lab to 'work me in' even though they had no appointment openings. I should be there by 3:15pm, she said, but be prepared to wait, since they'll be squeezing me in whenever they can. Oh, and I should drink 32 ounces of water 1 hour before the "appointment" time. Are you freakin' kidding me???

The way I feel right now, this sounds like a sentence of torture!! First of all, I've got to get someone to drive me to the damn appointment - someone in front of whom I won't feel like an idiot when I'm moaning and panting in the back seat. (R took off on Wednesday to take care of me, and I really don't want him taking any more time off because of this shit.) Then they expect me to just hang out in the waiting room for God knows how long....with a full bladder?? Not only is it excruciating at this point to have even a moderately full bladder, did I also mention that I can't sit or stand for more than about 2 minutes without feeling acute pain radiating across my right lower abdomen?? There is simply no physical way I can do this. My plan is to march (hobble) in there, tell the receptionist that I'm in major pain, and I simply cannot sit in their waiting room. I'll give her my cell phone number, tell her that I'll be laying in the back seat of the car, and to call me when they are ready to take me. The time it takes to get to the car from the office will be bad enough.

I'm so exhausted from this pain, and so tired of laying, squirming, tossing, turning, in bed. If nothing else, this kind of thing really makes you appreciate having a normal pain-free life. I should count my blessings every single day! I'm so aware right now of things I usually take totally for granted.

I think the worst thought though, that keeps creeping into my mind, is that after all of this, if this doesn't work?....Ugh, what a nightmare it will be to know that we have all of this to look forward to with IUI#2...