Last updated on August 7, 2023
I know better than to be typing this instead of stories! The stories are hard, yo.
Anyway, we’re going to talk about how I’m too smart for my own good, and a little bit about women’s health. Sorry, fellas, it’s going to be GROSS.
I love the internet and googling random shit. However, googling medical symptoms -can- be detrimental to one’s health. Especially when that person leans to the hypochondriac side. I should probably back up and give you my medical chart.
I’m pretty sure I have had PCOS since I was a child. I started having periods at nine years old. NINE. I was five feet tall, and everyone treated me like I was older than I was. I was at girl scout camp when it happened. It was a HORROR MOVIE amount of blood. I’m not exaggerating. Typical periods are spotty and light for the first time. Your body is transitioning and womanhood is shiny and new. Nope, not me. HORROR MOVIE. I bled for twenty-one days at a fairly steady flow. All my periods from nine to eighteen were like clockwork, but they were heavy.
My dad died when I turned eighteen and I gained almost two hundred pounds in about two years. I went from having a period every month to having one maybe once every ten months or so. I got cramps, bloating, all the emotional trauma of hormones, but no bleeding. It was kind of cool, kind of not. They put me on birth control to try and get my periods to regulate and gave me the “lose weight” prescription.
When I started bleeding again, it didn’t stop.
I bled for two years straight. We’re not talking spotting. We’re talking massive clots, which I thought was a baby the first time. Heavy flow that burned through a tampon and maxi pad often enough I wore two pads, and always kept extra underwear and stuff to clean up chairs should I leave a stain. I even bought a black towel and would only wear black bottoms to take with me to work.
2010 rolls around and I finally get a gynecologist who listens to me. I’m doing what they tell me and my body just won’t cooperate. I’m also getting exceptionally fatigued. She puts me on a different birth control pill, and after an abnormal pap smear she does an ultrasound. Confirms there are cysts on my ovaries, but she doesn’t think that’s the cause of my buckets of blood! Further digging and she diagnoses me with Endometrial Hyperplasia.
She gets me in for a D&C in January. Basically they take a scraper into your uterus and scrape it back down to what is considered normal uterus lining. See, I told you it’s gross. Great! February rolls around, and she said to expect a heavy period as my body will mildly freak out. My period was so heavy they sent me to the hospital for a blood transfusion.
Okay, no big deal, I’ve had heavy periods before. I have regular periods for the rest of the year. They are heavy for five days but go away. By my birthday, we’re back to bleeding non-stop. So she schedules me for a second D&C. That’s right, we reset it a second time! Why? Because I was still within birthing age according to the medical world and while in birthing age they will not perform a hysterectomy if it’s not absolutely necessary. This right here is why I think men should not be allowed to make medical decisions for women. I was thirty-three.
Well, after the second D&C I have to go in for multiple ultrasounds. The Doc wanted to monitor my uterus each cycle and see if it was something else. Bloodwork, exams, and ultrasounds galore. Nothing out of the ordinary, other than I start bleeding again. Then, there it was…a result that suggests I’m pre-cancerous.
In November 2011 I have a mental breakdown in her office. I’m sobbing and screaming about how if she doesn’t take my fucking uterus, I’m going to find someone who will. That I’m a grown ass woman and it’s my fucking choice if I keep my uterus or not. That I’m never going to have kids and it’s bullshit that I’m being forced to go through this. (She had suggested another D&C).
She hugged me. She then said she would take my uterus, but she wouldn’t take my ovaries. I thought they were the culprit. They weren’t.
In December 2011 she performed a partial hysterectomy and I lost eighty pounds. My energy levels returned and all the cysts on my ovaries disappeared. Though, I have to admit, my sister got pregnant shortly after that and I had to pull off the road because I had overwhelming joy and grief at the same time when I found out.
Fast forward to 2015. I’m reading about IVF and freezing eggs. Mr. F and I had just met, and he straight up volunteers to donate his swimmers. Like, I knew this dude for two months.
It all gets put on hold because I get sick. I head to an urgent care, thinking I have Strep Throat. She finds nodules on my thyroid and sends me for an ultrasound. Said ultrasound confirms quarter size nodules on each thyroid. This leads to biopsies to make sure it’s not cancerous.
I forgot to mention I’m being treated for diabetes all this time (2010-Present). My family has a history of thyroid and uterus issues as well.
I think the biopsies triggered the goiters. Three weeks after said biopsy the goiter in my throat was large enough it cut off air supply when I laid back. This is how I discovered how thoughtful Mr. F is. He got me a strawberry shake and remembered how much I hate whipped cream and scraped it off before giving me the shake.
So now I’m sans uterus and sans thyroid.
My weight went from 135 pounds at age sixteen to 425 at age twenty-three to 300 at thirty-three to my current state of 275. Now, I’m a big chickpea. I’m five feet nine inches tall. My weight distributes evenly with a little extra at my gut. I work very hard to keep my “diet” reasonable, and I get little activity.
My diabetes has ballooned out of control, but we’re working on it now with Mounjaro and insulin. I get to wear a little sensor that tracks my blood sugar.
I spend a lot of time fighting fat bias. I eat about 1800 calories a day and I keep my carb count between 100-200 carbs a day. For reference a slice of bread is 35 carbs. I finally had to tell my doctor if he wasn’t going to believe me and help me, then I needed a new doctor. I have the rare phenomenon that my blood sugar jumps almost a hundred points just by waking up.
You’re supposed to keep your blood sugar between 90-110. Mine currently lives at about 180-250. Prior to Mounjaro I lived at 380-450. If your blood sugar is above 300 more than three readings in a row you should be concerned, and most people should seek medical attention. I have to be hyper vigilant about medication with steroids in it. I got a staff infection, strep throat, and, sinus infection at the same time in 2017 and they gave me a steroid shot, despite my chart saying I’m a diabetic. They sent me to the ER. My blood sugar spiked over 600.
Anyway, I’m currently forty-four and I’m starting to feel the best I have in the past decade. Part of this is due to quitting my job.
Stress is a silent killer. It causes weight gain. It makes your body hurt. It destroys your organs. Quitting my job stopped the hair loss, helped me sleep at night, and has lowered my blood sugar by about 20 points.
In the mix, I got frozen shoulder in BOTH SHOULDERS. It hurt so bad, and you can’t use your arms. It was terrible. Doctors don’t know what causes it, but it typically happens to women in their mid-late thirties and forties who have diabetes/overweight/thyroid issues.
I get really shitty about the whole weight thing. They are just now discovering that there are cases where no amount of diet and exercise will fix some weight issues. They also know very little about women’s hormones. Most tried and true methods of medicine when it comes to weight loss focused on men in the studies, and don’t take into account women’s hormonal differences. If you are battling weight issues with your doctor, challenge them to think beyond diet and exercise. You will have to show proof and fight them assuming you’re lying, which is DUMB.
It took me literally photographing everything I ate, videoing any exercise, and threatening to leave to get my doctor to say, “Huh, maybe it is something else.”
So, what does this have to do with Google and being too smart for my own good?
Well, have you seen the movie, Kindergarten Cop? No? There is a scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger tells the kids he has a headache and one of them asks if it’s a tumor. “It’s not a tumor.” You should hear that in Arnie’s voice! I always think about this scene when I look stuff up.
Like the whole smelling cigarettes all the time thing. We don’t smoke. We never smoked. I haven’t worked in a bar in over twenty years, and we don’t go places that allow smoking. However, I get this super weird smell of stale cigarettes all the time. I asked my doctor about it and they said it was likely a sinus infection and treated it. Okay, scent goes away. I’ve been checked twice since then when it happens and nope, not a sinus infection.
I turn to Google, the best doctor out there!
If you believe that, you’re an idiot.
Google “smell cigarette smoke all the time”.
The top result is Phantosmia. Basically, I’m crazy.
It’s not wrong. I also have Misophonia. Crunching, chewing, scraping, white noise, and pretty much a lot of sounds that don’t bother people turn me into a murderous she-hulk.
People don’t get it. For example, my mother loves salad. She loves peppers, onions, and other things in the salad. I can’t be in the room when she eats it. She does nothing weird. She doesn’t chew with her mouth open. She doesn’t bite her fork. She doesn’t slurp.
But she takes 900 billion chews for a single bite. So it’s CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH 900 billion times for EACH BITE.
Okay? She’s chewing, like she’s supposed to, why are you so jacked up about it?
Here’s what happens to a person with Misophonia.
Pick a sound, any sound that you hate. Take a megaphone and put it to your ear. Play that sound while the megaphone is cranked as loud as it will go and keep it pressed to your ear while it plays over and over.
That’s what her normal chewing five feet away sounds like to me. Like she’s standing right next to me and chewing in my ear through a megaphone cranked all the way up.
Fidget spinners make me want to murder people. Fans, any white noise really, keep me agitated and on edge.
Misophonia triggers your flight or fight response and nine times out of ten you don’t even know why you’re on edge.
I have discovered it is stress related. The more stressed out the worse it gets. Mr. F won’t even eat potato chips around me. He goes to our pantry and closes the door to enjoy chips. I feel so guilty about it. But -he- chose to do that. He said he would rather do that and enjoy his chips than me lose my shit because he doesn’t take a god damn breath between bites.
We have to crank the TV during food or be in a restaurant because he does this inhale thing, like he’s gasping for air with a mix of snerk because he shovels his food in like I starve him. I don’t! I feed him every day!
So, there you have it. That’s a lot of medical whatever and now you know I’m a crazy person.