It is a cold Saturday afternoon and it is raining outside, which is not unusual for this part of the world at this time of the year. After spending a few moments mulling over taking a post-lunch siesta or lounging on the sofa, I decided to write this post as it has been on my mind for very long.
A woman in her late 30s, I have had hypothyroidism for about 25 years now. Thankfully it was caught very early which I attribute as the reason for it being under control for the at least half of those 25 years.
In this post, I am documenting some conditions that I have experienced and continue to experience, that are not directly related to hypothyroidism in the last decade and a half. And the number of days I lose or suffer as a result of these conditions. These conditions have had an adverse impact on my day-to-day living. It also impacts the closest people around me, aka, my family. These conditions are not very serious or life-threatening or nowhere close, but they affect my lifestyle and hence some of the choices I make.
Ever since my childhood I remember experiencing regular headaches. At the turn of the teens, I also started getting frequent and severe attacks of migraine – the lopsided, pounding headache, the momentary black-out, nausea, vomiting and the whole deal. If you have not experienced a migraine or a headache, consider yourself lucky. However, the migraine had subsided from the late teens or early twenties, I don’t recall exactly when it reduced or stopped.
Mid-twenties before I was married, I had another condition that developed. When it appeared the first time, I woke up in the middle of the night with severe abdominal pain that lasted a few minutes. After those few minutes, there was no pain at all so I slept from the exhaustion of the pain. I was woken up about an hour later with the same kind of pain and it lasted a few minutes too. This pattern kept repeating for a few hours that night. By morning, my parents and I were all worried but the pain had stopped at some point during the dawn. But did it? The rest of the day I couldn’t believe it was the same body because it seemed absolutely normal during the day. But, the pain revisited the following night and for a couple more nights after. Suspecting the worst we had made appointments to get seen by a doctor that week. However, by the time of the appointment, I had been pain-free for a day or two, even sleeping well through the night. The doctor and the ultrasound scans found nothing unusual.
It had been a few pain free weeks when I was woken up at night with the same excruciating pain. By this time I had sort of known what to expect. I experienced pain through the night for a few nights and then nothing. The same thing repeated itself for a few subsequent months before a doctor in the extended family figured it likely was the mittelschmerz, a fancy German-word for the ovulation pain. No one else in the immediate or extended family seemed to have even heard of this, let alone have a history. As with hypothyroidism, perhaps I was The Chosen One in all of the family. With parents that pampered me during those nights with hot packs and prayers, these painful episodes did not seem that disruptive.
I then immigrated to the US, got married and birthed a child. My life changed completely in many aspects however in the aspect of my abdominal pain, it did not. Things got worse as my migraine started becoming more common too, especially after pregnancy, lasting 3 long, disruptive and completely unproductive days. Over the course of the years, I had consulted many doctors – allopathy, homeopathy, naturopathy and I have taken severe pain pills, swallowed bitter potions and sugary pellets, eaten herbs and supplements, given up on a food or two, yet none of them would seem to cure either the abdominal pain or the migraines.
It occurred to me one day that I could quantify the number of days I lose to these pains. So here goes the analytics:
On an average, the abdominal pain lasts 5 nights a month. I would give this an average pain level of 8 on 10 because during these hours I cannot sleep, I twist and toss and turn and sit up and lay down on my tummy, walk around, roll around, do some twisted yoga poses if one may even call it that. Many a nights, I have sat up and simply cried. The pain is unbearable even for someone with high tolerance to pain like myself. Typically the pain subsides around 7 am and the rest of the day I am groggy and exhausted.
Migraine starts off very mild, 5 on 10, sometime mid-day and then progresses to worse as the day wears on. By 4 or 5 pm it peaks and ends up in nausea and vomiting. Many a times I am unable to eat anything for the rest of the day because it refuses to stay inside, even water. I retire very early on such days. Sleeping, with or without pills, helps through the night. When I wake up, the pain is still there – it is not worse enough for me to lie down but its awful enough that I cannot focus on anything completely. It is the nagging, annoying kind of pain. This lasts for 2 to 3 days.
In total, over the last 12 years in the US, I have spent close to 10 days a month in pain and recovery. That comes to 120 days a year. In other words, I have spent 1440 days or 3.9 years in pain. Or almost 1/3rd of the last 12 years has been spent hurting physically. The painless 9 months during pregnancy is compensated by the years before 2009 when I did have the pain. This is also not counting the days I have fallen sick to the flu or the cold or other conditions.
That’s my pain analytics. Matter-of-factly! Yet, I carry on the rest of the days by trying to make up for the lost days.
Health is wealth.
Stop. Breathe. Relax 