Back in the Saddle Again... well, sort of.

After months and months of being out of touch with everything from my relatives and friends to the internet, I'm back. After several months of one health problem after another, here I am again, much to everyone's dismay.

First off, let me say that Perimenopause is a bitch. I've been riding the hormone roller-coaster for over a year now and it's been literal hell. After turning 40, it seemed like my body took some kind of hidden cue and began acting up.

Last August, I noticed that I wasn't feeling so well. It was hot outside - ranging close to the hundred degree mark with 90% humidity, and on several occasions I almost fainted - once while driving. I put my general feeling of ill health down to the heat. Big mistake, that was.

On August 18th I was sitting in front of my computer at work, just minding my own business and typing away, when all of a sudden a bolt of pain knifed through my lower abdomen. I doubled over and clutched my stomach, instantly wondering if I'd eaten something bad that morning. But the pain was low in my stomach and deep, so I then figured it was something of a gynecological nature. I got up and went outside to get some fresh air, hoping to walk off the pain, but instead, it intensified. I went back inside the building and rushed to the bathroom because the pain became so pointed that I felt nauseous and I wanted to be near the commode in case I ended up driving the porcelain bus. (Throwing up).

In the bathroom, I felt a wave of nausea and dizziness that was so strong the room began to spin and that's when I became terrified that something inside me had ruptured and I was now bleeding internally. I staggered back into my cubicle and dropped into my desk chair, thinking that if I passed out, at least it would be where people would find me. My vision narrowed down to a tunnel and everyone's voices around me seemed far away and became somewhat fuzzy-sounding. That's when I knew I was going down for the count. Next thing I know, the room is bright and clear again, and someone was pressing a cold, wet rag to my forehead.

"You fainted," one of my coworkers told me. "How do you feel now?"

I just looked at her and shook my head. Even though I was alert and no longer feeling faint, I still felt weak and shaky. Sweat poured down my face and down my back. Apparently I was experiencing some form of shock, which can come with a sudden drop in blood pressure (sometimes associated with internal bleeding). As much as I hated to do it, I told them to call 911, which they did. When the EMTs showed up, they told me my blood pressure had dropped precipitously and that I was probably severely dehydrated - which I didn't understand because I'd been drinking juice and coffee all morning. I suspected that something inside me had ruptured and I was bleeding internally, and by the time I got out of the hospital, it turned out that I was "sort of" correct.

What they found was that one of my ovaries had ruptured due to a lemon-sized cyst that had been growing there. Apparently the sharp pain I'd felt that morning came around the time the cyst had popped, taking my ovary with it. The bad news was that there was another one on the other side that hadn't popped yet, and it was already the size of a golf ball.

When you hear the word 'cyst,' you start thinking it has something to do with cancer, and that was my immediate thought upon hearing the news. Unfortunately, because I have a mild form of autism and have A.D.D., everything they tried to explain to me went in one ear and right out the other. I struggled to understand what they said and none of it made sense. It seemed to be a gynecological problem, not a general practitioner kind of issue, so I went to an OB/GYN first. That doctor was the one who told me I also had gallstones (something that they never told me at the hospital). Still, he seemed to give me the bum's rush and told me to take some progesterone pills and sent me packing. I didn't have cancer, but something was wrong, and no one seemed to be able to tell me what it was. In the meantime, my menstrual cycle went haywire.

After several doctor's visits, I was told that in fact I'd had significant blood loss, but the ovary had already begun to heal. My left side was sore for weeks. The blood loss wasn't primarily due to the burst cyst, though, as I soon found out. My hemoglobin levels were around 5.5, when they 'should' be around 12 to 13. I didn't 'feel' anemic, though, except that one day. A charge nurse at the OB/GYN surmised that I probably had been anemic for so long that I simply didn't notice how low it had gotten. My menstrual cycle wasn't helping, either. I was on it every two weeks after the cyst burst, and when it happened, it lasted for almost two weeks and had a heaviness I'd never seen before. I was prescribed high-dose iron to combat the low red count, but was told it would take several months to build my hemoglobin levels back up, since iron is not easily digested in the system.

While I was taking the iron, my blood pressure (which had seemed 'normal' prior to taking the iron) shot up to stratospheric levels [170 over 102 was one reading that scared me and the doctor at the same time]. The doctor said the systolic reading was high, but what concerned him was the '102' number I mentioned just now. It meant that my heart was working really, really hard to push and pull blood out and that could be an indicator of an impending heart attack or stroke. The progesterone I was taking didn't help, either. Even though it leveled out my moods, huge bruises and thrombosed veins began appearing on my legs. Blood vessels were popping inside my skin like bubble wrap. One even appeared in my right eye and I stared out at teh world through a red haze for over a week. One of the thrombosed veins hurt badly and I remember looking at it and thinking, "What if this had happened in my brain instead of my legs?" The next day, I threw out the progesterone. The vein thrombosis and bruising cleared up and the skin on my legs went back to normal after a couple of weeks, but I vowed to never take progesterone again.

So, since then, my moods have been so up and down they threatened to give me mental whiplash. One day at work, I was in a meeting where we received some news about a possible outsource of graphic design to a company in India and as I tried to take up for our department by telling the publisher that outsourcing wasn't a good fit for our publication, I broke out in tears. While my coworkers stared at me in horror, I cried even harder and couldn't stop. I knew I looked like I'd lost it completely, so after a minute or two, I got up and walked out of the room without a word to anyone. Of course, news of the 'crying incident' spread like wildfire through the office and as I passed groups of people in the hallways, they'd go quiet and stare at me as though I'd just confessed to being the Unabomber or something. That's when I knew there was something seriously wrong with me. I scratched enough money to go back to the OB/GYN one more time.

The doctor (female this time) told me that I was perimenopausal and handed me a bunch of literature on it. She gave me more high-dose iron to take and refreshed my prescription of blood pressure medicine and highly advised me to come back the following week to get another ultrasound. Unfortunately, that never happened because my insurance plan changed at the beginning of the year and now it's the pay-up-front kind with a 20% deductible. A regular followup at a doctor's office will cost me anywhere from a $100 to $300 or more, especially if they run more tests like an ultrasound. I can't afford this, so I'm just keeping on with the iron and going to the ER every time I run out of blood pressure medicine. I have to keep this up until open enrollment in November where I can opt for the higher-priced 'premium' insurance plan offered by Aetna, or drop it altogether and try to get health insurance somewhere else outside the company.

By the way, Aetna seriously sucks!!!! For the last 2 years Aetna has taken over $8,000 from me in premium payments and the plan I got for it, I can't even afford to use. Now I hear on the news that Aetna isn't going to cover anaesthesia for procedures like Upper and Lower G.I. exams. What a crock of shit! Maybe we ought to get all of Aetna's shareholders and force them to get a colonoscopy WITHOUT anaesthesia and see how the hell THEY like it! Bastards. I hope they rot. As soon as November gets here, I'm opting out of my health coverage and registering myself a business license under my old graphics freelance name and I'm going to get Blue Cross/Blue Shield, like I had when I was at my old job. I don't care if I have to pay more for the coverage - at least BCBS will cover things like anaesthesia!

Yes, I repeat: AETNA SUCKS.

Anyway, my hemoglobin levels are still a little low (10.5 at the last red count I got), but at least I'm no longer in danger of needing a blood transfusion (something I fought tooth and nail to avoid). Other than the wild mood swings and the unpredictable menstrual cycle, I do feel better.

It occurred to me that people with Asperger's Syndrome have one big problem aside from the usual ones with social interaction and such, and that is they expect their bodies to keep functioning whether they pay attention to warning signs (like anemia) or not. I ignored my body's warning signs and kept ignoring them until it became critical. Had I not fainted that day at work, it would have happened somewhere else, like when I was driving my car. It could have killed me. I always expected my body just to keep going until the day it finally just shut down, but I never expected this. I neglected myself and this is what I got for it.

I've always thought of my body as a 'ship' - not a pretty one, and maybe not the most stable one, but a ship nonetheless. It's weathered many a storm that I've piloted it through - until now. Until I was hit by Hurricane Perimenopause. The only thing I can do is keep spooning iron in while my blood keeps leaking slowly out. Right now, I'm keeping keeping myself afloat, but there are some days when I feel like giving up and letting myself sink. But in the meantime, I write.

Writing has seen me through some awfully hard times and this is no exception. Despite my health problems, it helped take my mind off of it all by turning back to my stories. I've finished one more novel and started another in the past 6 months. Writing helps me forget 'me' for a little while and live in another world. I don't know what I'd do if I could no longer type or scribble down my stories.

Well, that's where I am. I'm trying to get one of my novels going and see where it leads me. I've also decided to put up another website that I can reference in my online travels and hopefully promote my book. I'm not going through agents or publishers right now, but I will again in the future. No, this time I'm going with a POD service, just to get it out there. It might be a mistake or it might not, but hey, I've got to try. I'm tired of sitting here and just letting bad things happen to me. I'm going to make something good happen to me for a change.

Until later,

Jillian