If you’ve ever been someone that has experienced persistent and/or chronic pain, or know someone who has, then you would understand what it’s like to just “deal with it”, to put up with it until it fades into the background of your everyday life. You sense it’s there on some level, but you’ve become so used to that constant ache and pain, that it doesn’t really effect you that much anymore.
I have suffered from chronic recurring endometriosis for the last 24 years. I am one of the small number of people that having a baby did not “fix it” and instead it steadily got worse as I got older. I have had multiple surgeries over the years to keep cleaning it all out and even tried using the Mirena to alleviate some of the symptoms. In 2013 when I was at my worst, I ended up in emergency surgery twice as my body rejected the Mirena. If you’ve been following my blog then you would know early 2014 is when I began to turn my life around and started re-discovering my passion for fitness and running. The passion grew as the distances got longer. I’ve experienced amazing highs and dramatic lows in my running journey and I feel like I’m just getting started. But my passion and the constant search for those new experiences and highs can often lead me to neglect other parts of my life. For almost a year now I’ve felt that something wasn’t right “down there”. I had begun to feel the familiar niggly pains of my endo coming back, especially on my right side. Then I started to get random pains and aches that at the time I could easily pass off as training pains and fatigue as I was training for my first 100km and that puts your body under a lot of stress. To put it simply, I didn’t have the time to take any time off from training in order to go get things checked and so, like my endo pain, I allowed the new aches and pains to just become part of my new daily life and learnt to deal with it. On my mother’s side of the family, we unfortunately don’t have a great history or track record when it comes to Women’s issues, losing many fine women too early to one form of cancer or another. My mum had a hysterectomy when she was 41 due to persistent out-of-control fibroids, and prior to that she always had horrendous periods. I remember seeing her in so much pain and praying that this was one thing I did not inherit from her. Guess the health gods weren’t listening to me back then lol After UTA100, I took some time off from intense training, mainly to focus on Ruby and her journey with Perthes Disease, and so my body wasn’t as fatigued and yet the pain and symptoms were still there, and with nothing else to distract me I became acutely more aware of them. Suddenly, I was noticing that it sometimes hurt during sex, or that sometimes after I would go to the bathroom the pain would be so bad I would nearly cry. Think of a roaring pain like someone had given me a swift kick up the lady bits. I could be standing there having a conversation, and then out of nowhere an invisible hand would grip my ovary and squeeze for dear life, and I would have to bend over momentarily to get my breath back. I suddenly developed new smells about me, which to me made me smell worse than the worst man’s BO you could think of and I was mortified, and I began to experience bladder control issues (like the time I wet myself at the GC Marathon, but that’s a story for another day….!) But still I chose other things in my life as my priorities and pushed those thoughts out of my mind. Ruby is, and always will be, my number one priority. In the last few months we’ve helped her through major surgery and rehabilitation, we’ve bought and moved into our new house that will help her long term prognosis, I’ve travelled extensively to Canberra for work and progressed my career, and I somehow scraped the bottom of the barrel and dug deep to achieve my goal of a sub 2hr half marathon. See, I just didn’t have time to be unwell as there was too much life to be living! I just met with my coach a few weeks ago to work through our goals for the rest of this year and next year, including moving onto some longer term goals as well, and I had just started another fitness challenge to kick start my physical health again after a few months of over indulging. I was going to finish the year off with a bang by running 50km in Gold Coast Ultra, and I was super excited. But you can only ignore something for so long. As much as I was telling myself that these new symptoms were just related to my endo, deep down in my heart I knew different. So I reluctantly made an appointment to see my specialist, the first time in 4 years. I explained all these new little things that I had noticed happening, continually downplaying the situation “oh you know, it only hurts sometimes. I’m probably just being paranoid over nothing. It’s likely just my endo flaring up a bit nothing major”. He started with an examination, and straight away asked when my last pap smear was. Um, well I’m not exactly sure but I’m pretty sure I’m up to date as I think I’m on the register with my doctor, but I can’t tell you the date sorry (PS, I checked, and it was April this year. So not overdue thankfully, and I clearly have a really shit memory!). “Well there’s more visible abnormal cells here again so I’ll just take a swab and then we’ll finish the exam”. Ugh shit, not again. He then proceeded to put his hand up there and then push around with the other hand to feel any pain or swelling, and I instantly started to scream and swear. My whole uterus was seriously swollen and enlarged and pushing against other organs. He asked again about when I felt the pains and told me he was surprised I was getting any action or able to run at all with that amount of pain and swelling. Oh. Seems I have developed a higher pain threshold as I’ve got older lol In addition to the endo I have Adenomyosis, which in laymen’s terms is like endo but inside the muscle wall of the uterus, and each month it causes bleeds that can’t go anywhere. This leads to swelling, bloating, irregular periods, severe period cramping, pain during sex and going to the bathroom, hormonal fluctuations, acne, etc etc etc. There is no cure. Treatment options are either a) deal with it, b) insert a Mirena to see if that alleviates some of the symptoms or c) a hysterectomy. Given the severity of my condition and the recurrence of abnormal cervical cells, combined with my family medical history and what happened last time with the Mirena, options A and B are not on the table for me. So here I am instead with option C - 36 years old, facing a total hysterectomy (uterus, cervix and tubes) and biopsies to determine the next course of treatment. Thankfully I have had a bit of time to process the news and have been through a rollercoaster of emotions so far. My initial feelings were anger. I had specifically said to the health gods after Ruby’s surgery and her chicken pox that the Mulhearns were done for the year with health issues thanks, and go find another family to pick on for a change. Well the god damn health gods didn’t listen to me all those years ago and they sure as hell weren’t listening to me now. It wasn’t fair. I was used to dealing with shit over the years, but my poor husband probably didn’t sign up for this when he proposed to me all those years ago. And Miss Ruby has had to endure more in her little lifetime then some people ever will and now on top of her own worries and concerns, her mummy needs major surgery. How do I protect her emotionally when I can’t protect myself? My first real question after getting the news was “right, and when will I be able to train again?” and almost felt more crushed by the news I would need 6 weeks off from anything then the original news of the hysterectomy itself! Lol there goes my goals for the rest of this year, there goes the remainder of my fitness challenge, how the bloody hell am I (and by I, I mean my mind and my family having to deal with my mind) going to cope with NO EXERCISE FOR 6 F#@$%*G WEEKS?!? I don’t have the attachment to my bits like some women do, so I don’t feel like this will make me less of a women, but it’s a strange feeling to know that soon you will be missing some key body parts that make up who you are. I really want to hate my uterus for all the hell its put me through since my early teens, and have on many occasions threatened to remove it myself during yet another horrendous debilitating period. But at least once in our relationship it must have got its shit together long enough to make and house my beautiful girl, so I just can’t bring myself to hate on it that much. But believe me, I won’t be sorry to see it go! I was nervous that it will somehow change me afterwards, or that it will change my relationship. Luckily Nath and I had (only very recently) had the serious “more kids?” talk and decided that Ruby is more than enough for us. So I didn’t have that added pressure to think about. However, there’s a big difference in making that decision verbally, and then following it up with something completely permanent and irreversible. Thankfully, whilst they will remove my uterus, cervix and tubes, the plan is to leave my ovaries (assuming there’s nothing wrong with them) so at least I hopefully won’t have to contend with battling surgical menopause as well. I had always known that this would be on the cards for me some day, but there’s a difference between “some day” and right here and now. It’s here, it’s real and I’ll be honest, I think I was naïve before to think I would breeze through something like this just because I knew it would occur in the future. So far, no breezing! Then I was scared. Obviously. Any major surgery comes with risk, not to mention the potential for the Big C. No one wants to go through life with having to contend with either of those situations, let alone at the same time. I was scared of complications, of short term or long term suffering, of either surgery or follow up treatments not working. But now, I am onto the stage of acceptance (what can I say, I’m an over achiever and progress quickly lol). It is what it is, and I am choosing to focus on the positives that this will bring to me, my life and my family. No more chronic pain, no more doubling over in agony, no more intense hormonal issues (please let that include no more pizza face or bloody hot flushes!!!), being able to fit into my regular clothes again (right now I look like I am 4-6mths pregnant and have to contend with those knowing glances from people at work, like I’m hiding a big secret. Nope, not pregnant, just bloated from a uterus that is trying to kill me lol), and no more fear of me following in my relative’s footsteps. I asked Nath one night “how do you feel about it all? Are you worried about anything, does it stress you out?” and he was like “nah, whatever happens we’ll deal with it”. Oh, to live in my husband’s blissful world where nothing ever phases you and anxiety doesn’t exist lol but then I thought about it a bit more, and I realised that he’s right. There is nothing I can do now to change the outcome of the next few months. I also can’t go back in time and change something to magically make it different. So rather than waste these next few weeks stressing about what may or may not happen, I am choosing to focus on the now and the moments I have with my family and myself that make me happy. I’m not saying this is the answer to life, or that I won’t still have moments of stress and anxiety, but it seems like my husband might be onto something here (why are they always right?!? *insert eye roll*) I have always been a big believer that everything happens for a reason, even if sometimes I struggle to identify that reason (like with Ruby and her Perthes). However, if I hadn’t taken the time off to focus on her during her recovery, then I would have continued to ignore the new and changing symptoms due to my constant high intensity training and reluctance to take time off, which may have led to me having a complete different prognosis and outcome right now. I realise my Real Girl Runner blog hasn’t really been as much about running as I would have liked this year, but I’m definitely fulfilling the “real” quota right?? If I can ask for you to take anything away from this, is please don’t ignore that little voice inside you, it’s called intuition for a reason. No, you’re not being paranoid and you know what, even if you are, it is better to be safe than sorry. Don’t put off getting things checked out because the timing is inconvenient – who knows if you will get another chance. Life is too short, so yes live in the moment but please try to do what you can to make sure you’re here to live the next one too. So here’s to the new path my life has decided to take. I know I will likely have more emotions leading up to my surgery next week and beyond, where I may not feel as strong and confident as I do now. But I have a family who loves me and are in my corner, an amazing support network around me, an awesome surgeon and my faith and belief that I can do anything I set my mind to, including to fight and survive. I wanted to finish this year off on a high note by completing another ultra race. Well I will still be finishing the year with a race, just not one that I run with my feet. Bring on the next few months and then in 2018, watch this space for Rhiannon 2.0: New and Improved. For those that are interested, I will continue to post on my page. Though, as the posts aren’t likely to be running related for awhile, I will understand if you choose to unfollow – I promise that I won’t be upset or offended. Because whilst I may only have a small following, if something I post makes a difference to even one person’s life, then it will be worth it. Much love to you all x
8 Comments
Shannon
3/10/2017 06:35:52 pm
You are one tough lady, I am sure will deal with anything that is thrown your way and come out the other side stronger! Such a positive attitude!
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21/12/2022 12:04:51 pm
İnstagram takipçi satın almak istiyorsan tıkla.
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8/1/2023 04:43:46 pm
100 tl deneme bonusu veren siteleri öğrenmek istiyorsan tıkla.
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30/6/2023 12:18:49 pm
En iyi aksaray ilan sitesi burada. https://aksaray.escorthun.com/
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AuthorHi, I'm Rhiannon and welcome to my blog. I'm not an elite athlete and I may never win any races, but I'm a "real" runner, juggling work, family and life to achieve my running goals. Archives
October 2020
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