birth control

i apologize for being gone so long. i’m fine, well, i should say we’re fine.

Right before my Ironman i started to feel run down. i blamed it on Ironman burnout, a year of training taking over my life. i just wanted to get this thing done and over with. my training sessions sucked, my mental focus was off, and i was just tired. To psych myself back up i signed up for a half Ironman next spring in Hawaii where Maximus and i went last year and found our beach. That seemed to help, even though my last long run before my race was fraught with severe abdominal pain at mile 11 and required walking with pain the last 7 miles; i’d never had abdominal pain on a run like this before, but figured i’d done something wrong with my nutrition or hydration.

my race was ok. my swim was great, but i had no energy on the bike. In fact, i didn’t make the time cutoff. But, nearly 50% of the racers didn’t as the bike course had changed into the “hardest ironman in history,” which wasn’t something most of us had signed up for. But i was in great spirits about it–i’d still competed and had a great time.

But i never got my energy back. It was cause for celebration if i could stay up to 9 o’clock. Maximus got a cold too, and He was whooped. We transitioned into vanilla “married” sex and even had nights where we didn’t have sex at all! Well, i would put His cock in my mouth for literally 10 seconds and we’d count that as having sex for that day as not to have a blank day on the calendar. It was sad, but we both felt run down.

But we were both looking forward to a planned trip to Paris, France! We’d have a week together in our little French apartment we rented and would be renewed, play, re-energize our sex life in that romantic city. i packed comfy, Euro clothes so i’d be comfortable on the long plane trip, but also because i’d gained weight and size in my low-energy, no-workout state. i was really irritated when i found i was too big to wear the dress i’d worn just a month prior on GOT day, which was really fairly loose then. i kicked myself for letting myself go and vowed to get to crackin’ on returning to my athletic self.

i knew Paris was going to be a challenge to my vegan diet. i ate vegan whenever i could, but ended up vegetarian a lot due to how much dairy the French use. i had fish a couple of times too. i ended up feeling bloated and constipated and felt i smelled “cheesy.”

We did have a marvelous time in Paris, though! Our apartment was perfect, located in the fashion district by the Louvre and next to the St. Roch Church. Incidentally, we discovered that Marquis de Sade was married in that church–how ironic was that!!

We put a lock of love on the Passerelle des Arts and tossed the keys into the Seine:

And Maximus got me a pair of Christian Louboutin red-bottomed shoes from his original boutique on St. Honore to celebrate our 100 days without a raging episode–a celebration for both of us, not just me.

But i never felt awesome. We returned home and went swimming a couple of times, which was absolutely awful for me–i never shared with Maximus just how awful i felt about it. First of all, i had a belly, which i’d never had before, and i was horribly embarrassed in my normal two piece athletic training suit i always wear. A, secondly, i had no energy. i wanted to bawl the whole time. The first day we did 45 minutes and i used the kick board a little bit. The second time, i had to use the kick board over half the time and could only do 30 minutes. Boy was i out of shape!

i got home and back to work, still feeling blah. i could not even run on the treadmill, felt tired and bloated. i wasn’t really constipated anymore, but felt bloated even though i was back to my normal diet. What was worse was that my uniform pants hardly fit me, they were so tight! They had fit before i left for Paris. We’d run in a 10K race and walked 40 miles on our trip, so any food shouldn’t have accounted for such an increase in my girth. i was so disappointed in myself, again.

And then i got horrible abdominal pain. i spent a day in bed, body aches, skin hurt, figured i had a virus. Then it went away, but returned when i was at work. i ended up taking sick leave and heading straight to the ER. They started working me up for appendicitis but then during a routine pelvis exam, found my uterus very enlarged and so painful that it nearly sent me off the table! Ultrasound revealed two large fibroid tumors, equivalent to 15 week-old twin fetuses, which had evidently grown very quickly.

After morphine and fluids, i was sent home with pain meds, anti-nausea meds, and stool softeners, to wait for an OB-GYN surgical consult for a hysterectomy. Family and friends came to help. The pain has been awful, i’ve been constipated and then had horrible diarrhea, and vomiting too. My consult was with my normal OB-GYN who had done a pelvic exam on me just 3 months ago after he’d inserted my new IUD–he knew my uterus had been normal then. Turns out, the tumors do not appear cancerous (yay!) but in their rapid growth have pulled my IUD and strings completely inside my uterus, but not perforated it. i also have a burst ovarian cyst we didn’t know i’d had. There’s no reason for me to be constipated, and i’m not showing that way on radiological exams, and no reason for me to have a huge spike in white blood count. Because of these things and my “angry” abdominal cavity, my doctor wants to wait a week for my abdomen to settle down before doing a laparoscopic hysterectomy, as he fears that my recovery and outcome would be less successful with things so upset. It’s not like i need an emergency hysterectomy today, but really soon. So i’m on a clear fluid diet, weaning off pain meds to lessen constipation risk, on birth control pills to quiet down my uterus and ovaries for a week. Then i’ll go back in to recheck and hopefully schedule the operation.

Poor Maximus has been traveling for work all this time too, feeling awful that He couldn’t be here. But He’s here now, helping me while i work to quiet down my angry abdomen. And, that seems to be His specialty, helping me quiet down my angry body.

i asked Him to do a rectal and pelvic exam on me, gently, because He really is the expert on my anatomy. And, because we’d just had some great sex with a mindblowing orgasm while He nearly fisted my vagina two days before this pain started. He had wanted anal at that same time, but i said i just felt so bloated that i asked if He could not do that, which He complied. Well, when He put two fingers into my vagina He shouted, “Holy Fuck!” my uterus is so swollen that it has pushed my cervix to within an inch of my vaginal opening, nearly prolapsed. And He just couldn’t believe how big and painful my uterus is. my rectum isn’t blocked by my uterus, which it feels like to me, but He can feel my cervix pressing into it. He’s just amazed at the rapid change.

So that’s were we are, folks. Maximus asked me to blog, knowing that i have been just too exhausted the past couple of months to do it. i’m not working, not doing anything but resting right now, so i can use the energy i do have to catch you up and blog about this as things progress. Hopefully you don’t mind a sexless blog for a couple of months as i’m totally out of that realm for a while!

Maximus is calling me His “Hot Fucking Mess” now.