I am considerably more nervous about this MRI I am having in a little over three hours from now than I thought I would be.

I don’t know why I am so worried. Maybe it’s the inclosed space, maybe it’s the fact that it’s one of the few medical tests I have not had in my life. Fear of the unknown? I guess so. I mean it’s not like they DO anything to me. I don’t believe I will be poked.. I think they inject something into me for the last bit, but I am not sure.

See? I don’t KNOW. And I don’t like that.

I am thinking really intelligent thoughts like, what if my tattoos catch on fire and they have to amputate my legs? Isn’t that brilliant?

Still not sleeping well due to the removal of The Pill, but last night was mixed with nerves about this exam. I was having nightmares (so I must have been asleep at some point, right?) and mild panic-like episodes. I hate this.

Let’s also add to the fact that I have abnormally awful feeling cramps with this stupid second period. I don’t just hurt, I feel like death warmed over. (What the hell does that mean, anyway??)

The last thing I want to do is work… so I haven’t don’t a heck of a lot of it. I am doing important things, just not at 100%. More like 70%.

And my darling hubby, who had to take the entire day off just to be there for me this afternoon, got up and drove me into work. I was going to take the bus, but he’s all sorts of awesome and drove me in. We even took the dogs – which turned out to be less of a happy thing than I thought. Poor Jinx hasn’t been in the car in so long that he was TERRIFIED as we drove into town. The little pup who LOVED the car and LOVED to look out the windows and LOVED to go for drives? Yeah, he’s gone and replaced by, shaking, terrified, tortured-looking, almost-two years old guy. I felt so guilty. He started to calm down by the time we got to my building, but then, you know, I LEFT and both dogs looked quite distraught by that. Oops.

Anyhow… I love Shawn. I love my pups. I hate medical exams and cramps. The end.

[MRI is at 3:00 p.m. today. I have to show up at 2:00 for my sedation ]

I woke up at 6:30 to go to the bathroom this morning (a half hour before my alarm goes off – bah!) and lo! My period has started… this wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t just HAVE it about two weeks ago!

I don’t want to stop taking my pill, damnit! It had better not be the cause of my problems. Because right now my cramps are so bad I want to cry and die not particularly in that order. And now what? What do I have to gauge when this will happen again? Do I count the days from the real one or from this one. And how long is this going to last??

Ugh.

The boys might not want to read this one. I’ve been saying I was going to write this since, um, last May? And I promised Peeved Michelle that I would and yet never got around to it and honestly, I don’t even think she reads this blog anymore. Oops!

Mishka’s comment in the post below made me reconsider not writing about this. Though it totally falls in the TMI category, I feel that maybe if I write about my experiences it might relate to someone else, or at least give others another perspective.

You grow up thinking, when I get my period I am a woman and I will have kids (maybe) and blah, blah, blah. Or at least you do if you’re a girl. But then you suddenly find out YEARS later that not every woman is the same and everyone reacts to things differently.

When I was 18-ish I was prescribed The Pill to help with a myriad of health issues being caused by my irregular cycle. I was a virgin and it was certainly not prescribed for any birth control reasons. My GP was hoping that this would solve a bunch of problems and hopefully help clear up my skin (ha!). She really was great and that’s when I started Tri-Cyclen and was on it for many, many years.

Once I gained my 60lbs from depression meds and my boobage got boobagier I was in CONSTANT pain. Not just for that one little week a month where hormones would be raging and there would be sensitivity. No. This was an every day thing. I couldn’t move and I would hurt. I couldn’t sleep on my side or my stomach. OW!

My new GP (the other one went and had a baby and stopped working for a while. Bitch.) prescribed Alesse for me since it was supposed to be lower in, um, something (hormones?) and more gentle. This would have been May 2003. I was having even more problems after I had my appendix out in November 2002. I was warned that this would make my period lighter. By August NOTHING was happening. And I mean NOTHING. When I saw the doctor again a year later and gave her my daily chronicled list of what was happening (occasional spotting, but no period, cramps, bloating and all that other stuff, but no period) she told me, “oh, that’s normal”. Huh. I didn’t think it was normal. Yes, I hated having my period, but also, it just didn’t FEEL right and I felt like crap. Not to mention I had zero libido. Zero.

The month of my wedding, July 2005, I stopped taking it altogether. I honestly wanted to see if anything would happen. Would I get my period? Would I have any interest in sex? Anything? By the fall I was thrilled when one day – I had what could be considered a very light period. I actually felt a weight lift from me and felt a little more human. But then… nothing. Another 3 months passed before anything else happened.

So in May 2006 when I was back for my yearly exam and I told my GP it had been almost 4 years and in that time I have had possibly 6 periods… well. She prescribed me the pills I have been taking every night since then – Yasmin. Since I started it? Regular periods, I could set a clock to them. My skin cleared right up. After one month of taking them I LOST 6 pounds (10 total before the surgery). I started to get some sort of libido thing back (a little ).

My problems? That first month was hell. I was nauseous all the time. Morning, noon and night (unlike my every-night regular nausea). I started getting migraines as bad as I used to get them when I was 12. Kaleidoscope vision, vomiting, crawl into bed with the covers and pillow over your head in the dark, thinking your eyes were going to explode pain type migraines. I honestly don’t think I have had them that bad since I was in my early teens. That quickly evolved into week-long migraines that were at least “mild” enough to allow me to go to work and struggle through the day.

But all in all. I have felt NORMAL and healthy on these pills. I am loath to stop taking them because I know how much trouble will return if I am not on my pill. I honestly hope that this is not the cause for the liver distress. I want to feel normal and not have teen skin anymore. (I still get breakouts, but nothing like the acne I have always had).

For once, in all the years it’s been since I “became a woman” at the age of 12… I felt normal and healthy. I’m a little worried about losing that feeling. And now I have the added terror of getting pregnant. Of course not that living in your in-laws’ basement isn’t a good enough form of birth control.