A tiny spider crawls across my window. He's rather smaller than those I've seen of late. It's just as well - should saddam the Spider and his two younger brothers (for there was a new spider 2 nights ago) return right now I'd probably just let him move right in. Hell, I'd give him a house-warming party. The bleeding started at a quarter to two this morning. I spent yesterday in pain but without the blood, which always infuriates me. At least when it starts I know that it will, therefore, have to end at some time, but pain before bleeding stretches it out for so much longer. It's a cruel fact of female life.
I got the shakes so badly yesterday afternoon that I had to lay down for a couple of hours. I tried to start some tattoo designs - a page of fairies - but my hands shook so much I got absolutely nowhere. I was alright during my call with Y but about 15 minutes after I'd laid down to try to sleep there was a twinge of a more intense pain and I had an awful feeling I knew what was coming. I drifted off to sleep only to wake up after an hour with crippling pain running through me, front and back. I staggered to the toilet, on all fours for part of the way, and sat down.
Usually the first biot of blood comes slowly, but not so this time. It poured. It absolutely flooded out. I felt like crying my eyes out. It doesn't matter how many years this has been happening to me, it's still just as terrifying to watch thick, black clots fall from me as it was when I was 16. I gripped the walls to help me back into bed and I thought I knew how to ease the pain. My usual nighttime tactic is to take my painkillers, get a hot waterbottle, put the electric blanket on and lay with my knees tucked into my chest and the hot waterbottle on my stomach. But heat from both back and front did not ease a thing.
Then the impossible happened and the pain got worse. It reached the highest peak it's ever been. I cried and dug my nails into my palms involuntarily. I shifted position of Pain Relieving Stance No. 2, on all fours. Nothing changed. The pain, in fact, worsened a little more. I put the TV on in the hope I could take my mind off of it and got stuck with a programme on The Learning Zone about scientists who claim to have discovered a 'gay' gene. best not tell my grandma about it. She'll probably claim it's right next to the hairdressing gene in a strand of DNA.
Half an hour passed and none of my pain-relieving stances had worked. Neither than the painkillers. I began to realise just why, in my weaker days, I had truly been so tempted to empty my whole bottle of painkillers while in the midst of a bleed such as this. Instead of slowly easing, it was still getting worse and I staggered to the toilet again, this time to throw up from the pain. I'd been able to eat so little the day before that I only gagged. I had nothing to throw up. Didn't make me feel any better though. I sat on the toilet to let the blood pour out again and just wished for some miracle to end all of this.
When it became clear I wasn't going to get one I went back to my bedroom and found Don;t Speak by No Doubt playing away on VH1 Classic. I didn't even recall changing channels. I tried to soothe the pain with the help of Gwen Steffani as a visual aid but it didn;t help. Then Bryan ferry came on anyway so I wasn't going to carry on 'soothing' myself in that way over him, was I?
I didn't understand how so much pain could be gripping me. I didn't understand why I was still alive. I knelt on all fours, panting like a pregnant woman in labour for fifteen minutes before I could slowly ease myself back into a laying position. I think eventually I passed out rather than slept. And I managed to pass out at the end of a film I'd been trying to watch to take my mind off it, so now I may never know what happened. When I woke up this morning, my body was in no better state than it was during the night.
I might not be around much while I'm this bad, which may be just as well :) But please don't think I'm being rude by my absence. Hugs to everyone, because you're all wonderful people who deserve them xxxxxxxxxxxx
For something far more lighthearted, go back one for some of my favourite links and things to do online :)
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