CONTINUING WHEN THERE’S NO OTHER AVAILABLE OPTIONS.

It’s been a while because I have been ignoring the world as it has been a very low point for many people. I finished my initial three months of hormone treatment and had my follow-up appointment on the 10th February.

I was hoping to go to my follow-up appointment with some other options available for me because, in three months, I couldn’t really say if the hormone treatment was working for me. Winter is already a shit time for me as the cold really gets into my bones and deeply affects my fibromyalgia flare-ups so my pain becomes quite severe and almost 24/7. It then becomes difficult to differentiate the pain and know what pain is from what flare-up. I know that my abdominal pain has been flaring up recently but I don’t know if a lot of it has been hidden in comparison to all of the other pain I have been experiencing. It just gets difficult to understand what is and isn’t working when you have multiple issues and just constant pain everywhere.

Having to go to a hospital appointment during a endemic is stressful and we know that hospital appointments without a pandemic is stressful enough, You are constantly having to fill out COVID-19 questionnaires and having your temperature taken (which is anxiety overload for me as I get fevers when my pain is bad). I wish I could say positive things came out of my appointment but I had to discuss how I’m finding it difficult to fully grasp whether or not the hormone treatment is helping my abdominal pain and then listen to the growing list of other options I may want to try in future but they currently can’t carry out. All surgeries are stopped due the the severity of COVID-19 on hospitals currently and there’s no idea when they can resume - it’s just another waiting game added to the list which is creating a severe backlog of patients waiting to get help and treatment. It’s overwhelming. 

What does that leave me with? Not much, not much at all. The only option available for me is to carry on with the hormone treatment for another three months and see if I notice a difference with six months in total on this treatment. So it’s just another few months of constant hormone treatment and the waiting longer to be able to have further surgery to do more investigating and hopefully some extractions. It feels slow and never-ending these days.