Adventures…

I’m trying to decide how I really feel, right now, about adventures. I’m trying to stay my Mary Sunshine self… but it isn’t working. I’m scared and thinking that maybe not knowing really isn’t such a bad thing.

I was having weird hip pain for a couple months. If I keep taking industrial strength Napproxin, it takes the inflammation out and takes the edge off the pain. I can stay reasonably good. Sometimes it hurts a bunch… but mostly I’m okay. But I can’t keep taking industrial strength Napproxin indefinately… so my Rheumy said that (if I stay off of it for 24 hours) if it hurts at least a 5, I should get an MRI to find out what is going on.

It hurt more than a 5… so I scheduled the MRI. It was with contrast. I should have known this wasn’t going to turn out as expected… when I got to the local MRI place, the machine had JUST broken down (yay me) and I would need to wait an additional 5 hours and drive 35 miles one way to get to the only other place I could get in unless I wanted to wait another week.

No… I was not going without NSAIDs for another however long… 5 hours it was…

I like the one where I ended up going. They gave me music and a cloth to cover my eyes and they didn’t blow out my vein when they gave me the contrast. It still took an hour, but it was a less sucky hour.

That was Thursday.

I knew my Dr only works till noon on Friday and I didn’t expect to hear anything then…

Yesterday, when my phone showed her office… I expected her nurse… or PA or whatever…. It was the doctor… not the best sign…

The good news… my hip is fine. I have a little bursitis in the joint which will clear up with time. Also reasonably good news… what is going on isn’t my back (L5-L6 vertebrae) or the nerves, disks or degenerative disease.

OH boy… the GOOD news is that the two things I was concerned with weren’t involved. WHAT was the bad news. NO no no, I really probably don’t want to know…

My uterus is enlarged. And being pushed out of its normal position by a fibroid tumor that is the size of my uterus. I need to find an OB-GYN who is willing to see a new patient this week (THIS week? REALLY? geeze) to talk about what now. I found one. It wasn’t easy, but I found one (most won’t see new patients before middle of July). Apparently, my uterus is pushing against my hip.

I had a back MRI last year that none of this showed up on. THAT MRI showed my ruptured disk and pinched nerves and that happy stuff… but no one saw this… so whatever is going on has been in the last year.

So, I have an appointment. And a computer and an internet connection. So, I’ve been digging. I pretty much know what I’m going to hear on Thursday. I’m going to need a hysterectomy. I’m not sure when I would get surgery, but it will prety much mean a hysterectomy… I told a friend this morning that it will only be a hysterectomy. She is thirty something and fighting her own battles but when she heard “only” a hysterectomy… I could almost see the astonishment at the comment. I had to smile… I understood the astonishment. It was an unsual statement to make.

But… I’m looking down the barrel of menopause anyway… and I get migraines all the time… and… if this will help get rid of the problem, then, it really is just a hysterectomy.

I have a computer and an internet connection… and I did REALLY well in online retrieval class (which is either a really good thing, or a realy bad thing, depending on your perspective… ) I know that I have a 1 to 2 in 1000 chance that this is cancer (a little higher chance because it is associated with menopause).

I know that, if I have to have surgery, I have to stopy my Humera… Last year I had to stop my Enbrel and after I restarted it, It never worked as well after that. I’m scared that will happen with my Humera. I don’t want to go back to having more than 2 involved joints. I don’t want to have to be tied to infusions every 6 weeks. I’m not sure if I’m just fundamentally messed up or not… but I’m more scared of what might be than what probably will be… maybe because I know what happens when my RA gets pissed…

So, my adventure continues. I’m not sure I’m up for this one, but… it is what it is…