Endo Month, Day 10: Yoga for endometriosis

Today’s post is a little late, but I do have a fine excuse: I spent almost the entirety of Friday enjoying quality time with my boyfriend. And when I say “quality time”, I mean “hours playing Dead Island, beheading zombies and eating pizza on the couch.” Which meant a late wake-up time today, and I had to be in early to a short-staffed workday with early deadlines thanks to the time change. Big fun.

But now that is behind me and I can introduce you to a site I recently found called YogaYin. On this site, yoga teacher Alannah describes her practice on focusing on women’s health and fertility, which takes on more weight when you consider she has severe endometriosis herself.

We’ve all been told that exercise helps manage endometriosis, adenomyosis and other pain, but when you are feeling like shit just walking from bed to bathroom it can be hard to muster up the will to go jogging or get to a gym. But I can say that, except for one truly brutal day, I always felt great and was really able to push through my belly dancing classes, just like when I was a competitive cheerleader. And my hips felt so loose and everything felt fluid rather than tight and twisting which was a great benefit.

So I present to you Alannah’s videos on Yoga for Endometriosis. I encourage you to check out her site, and definitely check out this video. Yoga is a gentle but effective exercise tool, all the more accessible for endo, adeno and PCOS women. Here is part one for endometriosis and flexible hips; you can find part two on her site and on YouTube. Let me know what you think!

Day 30: Estrogen doesn’t help anything

Finally getting some energy back … thankfully! However, that doesn’t prevent the weird sleep schedule. That’s going to be a beast to get rid of, as 4 a.m. has become the new bedtime. And one of my crazy neighbors has a rooster that crows around that time, which has me totally boggled as well as slightly irritated. He’s become my 4 a.m. alarm.

Talked with Amazing PCOS Doctor (APD) last week about my crazy terrible moon, finally. He seemed rather concerned about how bad it had been but there wasn’t much to do as far as changing the pill cycle because the moon had just ended. The headaches are also bothersome. He’s attempting to counteract that with putting me on low-dose estrogen instead of my placebo pills, since the combination pill I’m on now is actually not doing me any harm. I haven’t realized it til now, but I haven’t been throwing up. Or totally crazy. Or depressed. Hot damn. This might work!

Except, of course, for the heavy, crippling periods and increased migraines.

Which leads to another thought … anybody on Microgestin ever have difficulty sleeping?

This would of course be perfectly timed with having to drive across the state for required doula certification this week. I start the estrogen on Wednesday and have to drive 3 hours after leaving work around 9 on Thursday night. Apparently I have to space out when I take codeine and the estrogen by three hours, but the pharmacy didn’t say why. This should be interesting.

Day 17: To heat or not to heat

A coworker with a sore back from her cycle asked to borrow my heating pad at work the other day. I couldn’t even bend over to unplug it and give it to her, but I let her have it anyway. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I didn’t feel the need to ask for it back, which is good, but part of that could be that I was taking pain meds the whole time so I probably wasn’t really aware of what I needed. Bah.

Sometimes you just need to be selfish!

Day 9: Food, glorious food

Despite my poor sleep schedule this last week (with a “normal” bed time of 5 a.m.) and feeling sleepy around 10:30 p.m. in my 4 p.m. to midnight shift, by the time I got home, I was moderately awake and active. I hadn’t really eaten, so I rummaged around and found the last piece of kielbasa in my freezer (which I shouldn’t be having) and the last gluten-free doughnut (gluten-, wheat-, dairy- AND soy-free, to be exact). Most people would find that a strange combination; I find it to be another gift from the universe. It was delicious to me.

Oh, food. There’s so many rules to it, so many odd wants and diets and combinations. Everyone has their advice, solicited or not. PCOS changed a lot for me in the form of throwing my sugar out of whack and giving me a reason why I get shaky if I don’t eat properly (hypoglycemia is a bitch). I’ve been doing a lot better lately, but apparently not good enough some days: Last weekend I went shopping for pants by myself around 5:30 p.m. after having a few handfuls of grapes that day, and wound up sweaty, shaky and alone in an Old Navy dressing room. Like a dumbass, I told myself to soldier on and just get through what I had to try on, but a few minutes later I gave everything back to the attendant and ran (wobbled) to the food court for some juice (sugar) and chicken. Really, really embarrassing, and it would have been far worse if I’d actually blacked out in an Old Navy because I’m too stubborn to walk away when I think I might have found some jeans that fit.

But I’ve been mindful, though slacking lately, about what I eat. Last spring, I started Metformin (a glucose medication — pill, no blood testing) to try and keep things stable. I thought my Amazing PCOS Doc would want to do the glucose test again, since I’ve been taking the Metformin for a year and that can help manage the hormones better and as such improve ovulation, but he didn’t think it was necessary. He did an ovarian reserve blood test in February and, as it turns out, everything came back “extremely normal”, so there’s at least that!

I had been trying stick to a diet I found, in the appropriately named “Cooking for the Endometriosis Diet.” What a killer this one is: gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free, no red meat, no caffeine, no sugar. I’ve heard that a gluten-free diet can help with symptoms of endo, and soy is a phytoestrogen, so that had to go … but wow. The hardest thing is dealing with myself, just because it can be easy to avoid the big things and knowingly eat better, be concious of everything, try different foods and combinations and save money by not going out as much, but first you have to get through the cravings. And I love my friends a lot, but I only have one friend who has stuck up for me and my diet changes while several of them encourage me to break it. And I have broken it, because I was disappointed in the results (I lost a little weight but not so much the symptoms) and I was out on a day trip. Well, we all know how easy it is to stick to something after you’ve broken the cycle, right? Ugh. Added eggs back to my diet (down to two in the fridge and won’t buy more after they’re gone), and that kielbasa? Definitely not a part of the plan. I’m going to give it another chance and really stick to it, but I’m not sure how long I’m supposed to wait to find out if it’s helping or not.

While the diet may be ultra-strict, it’s worth trying. I’m desperate.

Any input from the internets?

Day 8: Writing without sleep

I just got home from work and have the workings of a classic (genuine) migraine, so this will be brief. Before you ask: Nope, it’s not from partying too hard or drinking — I only had two last night. It’s likely from not enough sleep — thanks for nothing, “spring forward”.

There’s lots of topics that come to mind but I know I’ll be up until 6 a.m. again if I get going now. (It’s a real possibility anyway.) Writing is so cathartic, especially for me, that I really appreciate everyone who says that they like my writing. I really like the idea of someone out there on the internets reading about my experiences and feeling a bit better about their own experiences because they can relate. If they didn’t, support networks wouldn’t exist in the first place. Last year, at the height of my stress during Clomid, I realized I hadn’t done any free writing in months. I bought a journal and have dedicated it to be just my journal for endo/PCOS issues. It was hard to get back into it at first — journaling for yourself and not for the internet audience tends to bring up memories of when your parents find your diary and want to talk about your feelings in the entries — but every time I wrote, I felt better at the end, even if I was still angry or concerned. It helps clarify what you’re really feeling; if you have a general depression, it can just hang on you, but if you are forced to put real words to it, you can figure out the root of the problem and work yourself out of it. I definitely recommend it.

I’m not going to say “Thanks for reading” or anything like that, because that sounds like a cheesy, disinterested form statement. Seeing that when I reply to friends on their personal blogs is irritating. I’m not your groupie, kid, and “Thanks for reading” sounds like the sort of thing a self-published romance writer would scribble on the cover of her latest novella featuring heaving bosoms and a farmhand with a heart of gold. What I will say is that hopefully this blog is doing more than just taking up space in the digital world and will eventually have involvement from other people going through the same things.

Day 6: A good tired

Today was my first day off this week and, after a full week of going to bed at 5 a.m. and getting up between 9:30 a.m. and noon, I was set to be tired and useless … except I had stuff to do. That’s just how it goes.

I did, however, act on impulse and registered for belly dancing classes at a local university. I’m in training to be a doula, and a close friend of mine who is also my patient said this morning that she signed up for the class on a whim and to strengthen her core muscles as much as she can before she’s too far along. I had registered online by 2 p.m., and at 6 p.m. we were the first people to arrive for the class — even before the instructor! I have some belly dancing experience from college days and haflas in St. Pete, but aside from some workout DVDs, haven’t done it in a while. Seems like it would be nothing, but the hip drops alone stretch you and warm you up — you are getting a real workout even before you get into the routine part of the class! At first, I felt some pain in my legs and hips despite doing some decent warm-up on my own before class, but it passed so quickly that I can recognize the improvement in my body strength just from the last few weeks of high-impact dance. Still, I am grateful that the room in which the class was held was sans mirrors, as I am sure my fumbling remembrances of a basic shimmy is not something I wanted to see.

My friend and I did have fun with the prop of the week — veils — and took some silly photos with her yellow veil after class. I wore a yellow hip scarf (sans bells — you can’t have everything) and my friend wore a long, daffodil-colored skirt for me, so we both took our endo support to class today. People asked about it (and why on earth we were taking photos), and when I explained, people offered to wear yellow at the next class so we would all be dancing for our health and supporting endo awareness at the same time. What good people! I also have found a kindred spirit in my instructor, who does a lot of work with the city’s women’s resource center and the university’s women’s center, and is a Super Advocate like me. She’s going to help with endo month, plus the anti-trafficking walk on the 22, and possibly my fundraiser concert for the rape response team next month. The universe is bringing me all sorts of good things this week, despite a higher-than-normal amount of pain: two refunds from the hospital, new friends, lots of ambition and a lot of coworker support.

The physical benefit from today: I could really feel a heat through my body, particularly my hips and pelvis, after class today. Perhaps it’s because so much of the dance is about separating your lower half to work independently from your chest and arms, or all the hip pops and shakes and undulations, but the heat radiating out from my own body was a welcome sensation. I will definitely be keeping this up! Plus, it delayed my need for pain meds for a few hours after class, which was amazing, and I came home with a good tired rather than my usual “dragging ass” brand of exhaustion. I’m looking forward to the dance aspect of Saturday night — I’m going to a second annual 80s-themed dance for charity and will be rocking a more punk look than I did at the inaugural event last year. This means flats or boots rather than patent leather pumps like last year, which is bound to be more conducive to some bitchin’ dance moves.

As for endo support photos, I’ll update with tonight’s pictures and a few others from the week on the Facebook page and here as well. Connections are everywhere!

Day 1: Endo Month 2009

Welcome to Endo Sucks! Please check our About page for information about ES.

Today is the first day of National Endometriosis Month 2009, and in typical style, the first day of my moon (cycle). The pain got me up at about 2:30 this morning and the codeine is giving me a rebound headache right now. Thankfully, I have the ability to keep a heating pad at my desk at all times, which will come in handy when I go to work at 4 p.m. today.

Endo Sucks! has been on my mind for a very long time and I am glad to be taking the time right now to give ES the attention it deserves. I will post with my thoughts, my pains, my experiences and my remedies, all of which will be searchable by appropriate tags.

One tip I will give to the ladies reading this blog is to try raspberry leaf tea; it is a natural helper for your “lady days,” and at the very least, the heat from the tea is very soothing. I use two teas at once during my moon: a bag each of Woman’s Raspberry Leaf and Woman’s Moon Cycle Tea (both by Yogi Tea and found at most health food groceries). They’re organic, caffeine free, and each box has a yoga pose for comfort and strength on it. Even the tea bags themselves have a different saying on the tag; mine say “There is no love without compassion” and “Love, compassion and kindness are the anchors of life.” Even if you don’t go for the “guru babble,” try the tea. It’s comforting.

I encourage you all to share this journal with your friends and loved ones. I’ll be happy to share stories, comments and questions from the supporters of survivors as well. My promise is to blog here at least once a day (I know I’ll post a new entry later today) and will respond to every e-mail. I look forward to keeping Endo Sucks! in the air!

Love & comfort,

Chanel