How Can I Escape Work Unnoticed Today? November 16, 2011

I’m lucky enough to work in an office and have a job that a) I can do from home some days and b) if I left, no one would notice and/or care (not like in retail where if you left your post as cashier, everything would go to shit)! This is a good thing.

Unfortunately, working as a small staff means that people notice you more. I don’t want to be noticed, especially not today. My week full of pain has continued in full force and effect this week. I had a medium day yesterday and was excited about that! I thought that the week from hell was finally winding up. Umm…no. My period was also supposed to be wrapping up now too. Nope, that has come on with a vengeance as well – just about 4 days after it started. It’s really starting to lead me to believe that my pain is reproductive in nature. I’m also wondering if my IUD is to blame for my pain, as my primary care doctor has suggested; but, I can’t let myself believe that. My pain existed for over a year before the IUD was ever inserted, so there’s no way that the two are related.

My day in the office so far has been crazy. I’ve been running around getting a new researcher set up. I’ve interacted with a lot of people today and put on a happy face! It’s what we chronic pain people do. In front of people, we do our best to act as if we’re just like everyone else. Behind closed doors we cry and pray for a better tomorrow. As I sit here with only 3 hours left in my workday (probably 3 of the longest hours of my life), I just want to run out. I can probably send a quick e-mail and escape, but I feel that I’ll be looked at as using my chronic pain as an excuse to leave early – especially given that I don’t look sick. Ugh. I feel so frustrated. All I want to do is go home, curl up on the couch and suffer in pain. I don’t want the “suffering in pain” part – it just comes with the package. If Motrin and Percocet did not help, what else will? A whole lotta drugs should do the trick, but I don’t want to go down that road.

Perhaps a nice big bag of candy will do the trick? Yes, chocolate fixes everything, right? Back to reality! Chocolate will not fix my pain and my butt will only end up larger! Bad, bad, bad!

What to do? November 2, 2011

I am completely conflicted this morning after speaking with my doctor.

Here are my options: 1. Increase Cymbalta dose to see if it helps with pain; 2. See a gastroenterologist; 3. Do nothing (that’s my option).

If I have IBS, then increasing the Cymbalta should help. However, I don’t really want to start taking more medication and treat something, until we have a good idea of what we’re treating. IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion and I just want to make sure we’ve excluded everything possible.

Given that I’ve had great test results thus far, I’m not sure there’s much more that the gastroenterologist can do. I guess there are more tests that can be run, but I don’t think they’re going to be very fruitful. The benefit to the gastro doc is that a) that person is a specialist so they may have more insight and b) perhaps a combination of drugs would help with IBS, if that is in fact what I do have.

Or, I could just ignore the pain and learn to live with it. I have had it for 1.5 years straight at this point. What’s the rest of my life? Plus, I have endo and have dealt with pain for years and years, so what’s more pain?

I’m completely frustrated and at a loss today. I’m going to mull it over a bit and see what’s the best route to go. But, I just suspect I’m going to be diagnosed as having pelvic pain with no known cause and that’s it. FML.