Someday will things be better?
Ok, let me preface this by saying I’m in the middle of my period, and it started out of nowhere, through birth control and with a short cycle…..
Over all I’m doing pretty well with the miscarriages. I’m definitely a ton better than before Christmas, and so on. However, I should be somewhere in my 9th month of pregnancy now if I hadn’t had the first miscarriage, and although overall I’m doing ok with that fact, it still stings at times. I would have been due somewhere right around the last week of February if I’ve done the math right the many, MANY times I’ve done it. It isn’t easy to realize that fact, but it doesn’t hurt as much as I would have expected it to…. probably because I’ve had long enough since I was last pregnant that pregnancy isn’t running through my mind as much now… and we’ve stopped trying so my focus isn’t on pregnancy. It’s been mostly on taking care of me, taking care of E, and getting rid of these stupid headaches.
On the headache topic – as long as I take my Plaquenil twice a day like I am supposed to (I’ve only missed one dose since the beginning of the month) they aren’t as likely to turn into migraines, but they are still bad headaches that are there almost constantly. With vicodin I can get the pain down to around a 3, and when they get really bad I also take an alleve (which overall I’m avoiding due to the digestive issues that run with me taking NSAIDs) which helps bring the pain down to about the same level. I’ve been getting breaks in the pain, not frequently and not for more than a couple of hours, but I have been having breaks from the headaches finally! These breaks started somewhere around a week ago and I’ve had 3 of them.
As I mentioned I’m in the middle of an unexpected period. My PCP and I have agreed that we think the Nuva Ring will be worth a try to see how I do… I just need to make it a couple more months until I can go back off the blood pressure medication for awhile (which isn’t making enough of a difference for me to want to continue, but I want to try it through the whole winter and see how it goes) and start trying again, if the rest of my health is in order. He (my PCP) tried to recommend an IUD for me to see if it would help with the endometriosis, but we both agreed that is definitely a long term investment, and I’m hoping that going back off hormones (or changing them) will bring my health back a bit better and I’m hoping to potentially start trying for a successful pregnancy again in a couple of months, so we’ll see what happens. Obviously though this birth control pill is not for me. And although we agree with my rheumatologist that the migraines are due to my lupus, we aren’t wanting to up the estrogen content on a pill any further. I know that I can’t do progesterone only birth control pills or shots, so the Nuva Ring is our next method to try. If these migraines and nasty headaches continue for more than another month or so (Dr. Rheumy is unconcerned unless they go more than a couple months) I will be going off the birth control and blood pressure medication… this is my own decision, which will be discussed with both doctors when the time comes… but I want to go back to the basics if they continue… and since both of these were started within a couple months before the serious headaches started I’m not convinced they should be continued if the headaches continue, I want to go back to where I was before all the changes and see if I can get my body a bit more under control. Those two things and cutting out beef (mostly, other than the rare meal with hamburger) have been the only real changes in my life other than a couple stressful situations which have been cleared back up. When I was just on Plaquenil I was not doing great, but I was definitely better than this. And since I can’t take the blood pressure medication without being on birth control (other methods don’t work for us for a variety of reasons) both are going to have to go. I will be sad to go back to having my fingers not work with the things they put on your fingers in doctor’s offices to check O2 levels (and pulse?)… but that is about the only thing that has noticeably improved while on the blood pressure medication (which was supposed to help my Raynaud’s a lot more than it has) so I’m ok giving that up to get back to feeling a bit better. Going off of those medications is not guaranteed to improve my health, but I want to at least give it a try.
I had other things I wanted to talk about but I can’t remember what so I guess this is the end for now lol! 🙂 I’ll do another entry at some point with an update on things.