Hello hospital bill; hello denied credit card application.

Les jeux sont faint. Nous sommes fucked.

"Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you’ll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You’ll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you’ll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you’ve got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name... 

...And then the nightmares will begin."

California!

For the third consecutive summer, I am spending time in California with the family that I nanny for :D We are back in the same house in Ojai that we stayed in last year. The weather is absolutely wonderful and so is the town. We've only been here for a few days but it is still incredibly wonderful to be back over here. Additionally, I've been able to catch up with a few of my ISV friends! Aprwil stopped by last night and we went off to the bar and then dessert at a Mexican place. Tuesday, I'm planning on heading down to Irvine to visit Jen for the night. And at some point, Nick is going to come down from his remote Air Force base to visit like he did last summer. Perhaps we will do the beach and dinner just like we did last year; that was rather enjoyable :) 

We have a few fun things that we've already done and plan to do yet on our visit out here. A few nights ago, we went down to Santa Barbara for a 5k called Night Moves. LA and G ran the 5k and the kids and I played on the beach and went on a mile hike up the hill to a park. I'd not been to that particular beach before; it was really beautiful. We stayed until sunset, which made it even better.

 Tomorrow, I only work until noon and I plan to just backpack around Ojai on one of the bikes. I'm thinking about going up to an open-air bookstore called Bart's Books for a few hours; I'd like to ride the bike path that winds the whole way down to Ventura [though, I won't be biking the entire way there and back]; and I'm going to get some school work/reading/knitting done...perhaps at one of the parks. It's rather late and it's been a long day...so sleep should probably occur soon.


On a completely unrelated note: my knife wounds seem to be healing up fairly well. All of the stitches and such have fallen out and now I'm just waiting on the itching and redness and little obnoxious bumps to go away...then all will be well in my world. Well, except for the hospital bill that I got today x.x

Uncertainty

I spent many years wondering if it was the past or just me that made sex such an irrevocably painful and unendurable experience.  Over the last few months I've discovered it was a solid combination of both. I was fortunately able to find a wonderful guy who listens and is able to (and does) treat me gently. I am incredibly happy with him :)

I was also able to get a much needed surgery that will hopefully (once everything is healed and back up and running) take away a lot of the pain that I previously experienced during sex and every month. Here's to hoping that everything turns out alright in the long run. On a completely unrelated note: California this time next week!

Knife wounds

Here are my incisions post-surgery:

Belly button incision

Right abdomen incision

Left abdomen incisions

Everything is still really sore and swollen...especially the right side.

Graphic Image Warning:

Below, you'll find images of my uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and cysts with the endometrial lesions and cells....painful AND gross!

Left: Dark spots are endometrial cells.  Right: My uterus.

Dooooom cyst

Removing lesions with da vinci robot

Uterus/Removing lesions

Same as above.

Left: After cyst. Right: Cyst about to be burned out.

The anxiety sets in...

Surgery is set for this Wednesday morning and the anxious panic has already begun. I realize that this is something that I need to do and something that is supposed to make me feel better in the long run, but frankly, I'm scared that I'm just going to hear bad news after the surgery is finished. Realistically, the only good news that can come from this is that they were able to clean me out a bit and I should be good for a *few* years until I need to get it done again, as endometriosis is a disease that cannot be cured or ever entirely removed from the body. Thus, it keeps growing and spreading about my various organs--huzzah, huzzah. Furthermore, the surgery is being done by a mildly frightening looking robot surgical machine...it looks like this:

I mean...really...I'm going to be unconscious under all those probe-y pokey looking things while the doctor plays a fairly realistic video game to remove all the lesions and cysts... No bueno. 

If you're at all curious-- endometriosis is a progressive disease that affects 5-10% of women. It is characterized by the presence of endometrial tissue on the ovaries, fallopian tubes, or other abnormal sites, causing pain or infertility. Mine presents with both dyspareunia and secondary dysmenorrhea; this makes life a bit of a living hell. Additionally, my endometriosis is paired with both adenomyosis and endometritis. 

Supposedly, this surgery will increase my chances at becoming at least mildly fertile, though my doctor is not very hopeful about that bit.... I found this handy flowchart that illustrates this whole process:

I followed the pain side as I have yet to even attempt getting pregnant. The path I've followed is Pain > Moderate to severe > Laparoscopic diagnosis [wednesday] > Surgical excision and ablation of lesions [wednesday] > Immediate postsurgical therapy with danazol, OCPs, GnRH agonists or progestins [post-surgery].....somewhere between pain and the laparoscopy I had to sit through an internal ultrasound...which, incidentally, hurts like hell. 

Anyway, I'll stop bitching for now. Gotta get some sleep as I'm headed to Bethlehem tomorrow with Leigh Ann for this Knitting event thing at a local brewery :) I'm excited.