Oof

What a stressful week. My sister-in-law—almost exactly my age, her birthday just two weeks after mine—died last Saturday. She had diabetes, and other disabilities, but still it comes as a shock. Her kid is a year younger than my kid. It’s overwhelming to think about.

I’ve been super stressed all week. She died Saturday night at 7, I found out at 8, and the next day I had to officiate a wedding. Monday I had an emotionally fraught fundraiser to attend (some of that emotion due to the cause—Palestine—some due to my feelings—unrequited?—for the performer, who has since left the country). Tomorrow I am taking my cousin to/from the hospital for a GI scope. Day after tomorrow is my annual eggnog party. I have so much prep to do and so little motivation. I just want a nap.

I had a bad pelvic floor moment today (don’t ask). My shoulder has been acting up, too—it’s still on the level, but feels wrong, and my neck and arm are kind of messed up, going right down into my hand, and I’ve had a couple of vertigo moments as well (including one where I almost fell on the stairs). I am tried an anxious and if I didn’t know better I would think I was having a heart attack (part of my reason for posting today is so that if it is a heart attack, I can legit say “I told you so!”)

Is it happening?

So years ago, I went to my doctor with an array of symptoms—headaches, bad acne, night sweats, general misery—you can guess what that was about. They put me on low-dose birth control, as a sort of “HRT-lite” for perimenopause symptoms. 

And it was great! I got my period maybe twice a year, felt fine, symptoms went away, I was my old self again.

Well, the last time I tried to get my prescription renewed, they said I was too old and it was no longer safe.

I can’t remember if I posted about the last time I stopped taking BCP.

It was December 2021. I had just gotten my prescription, but got covid before I could fill it, and I was in isolation for two weeks. As soon as that was up, I picked up my pills, and waited for my period to start taking them (way back when I started, that was the instruction: start the pack on the Sunday after your period starts).

So I waited and waited. Months go by. I thought maybe I was free. But then in April, it comes, and it’s a doozy. “The Waterfall” is what we call it. Utterly brutal and I had no supplies. I spent a week clutching a hot water bottle to my belly, never straying more than a few metres from my bathroom, just in case.

A doctor friend told me, “Sometimes there’s one last big one and then you’re done.” So I didn’t start the pill right away, in hopes (again!) that I might be free. 

Nope.

After Waterfall #2, I got back on the pill and have been on it ever since. Until now.

And I’ve started having symptoms. Food cravings, pimples, some I won’t go into here, but what’s really getting to me are the headaches. Excruciating headaches. I was flabbergasted for a couple of days until I remembered, oh yeah, this was one of my symptoms at the start of this whole process.

Trying to remember if I had headaches back in spring of 2022, but I probably would have assumed it was covid-related back then anyway.

I am just really, really hoping there is no repeat of The Waterfall.

The core

I haven’t done any “dedicated” exercise in months.

By that, I mean exercise for the sake of exercise, as opposed to biking as a form of transportation, walking to get groceries, etc.

And I kind of prefer it that way.

I had a gym membership before the pandemic, which I used a few times when the weather was too hot or cold to do much outside, but I generally find working out to be incredibly dull and I’m not motivated to do it.

My physiotherapist has other ideas though.

Have I mentioned my pelvic floor yet? TMI? I started seeing a pelvic floor physio to deal with some of the usual symptoms of being a middle-aged woman who delivered an 8-pound baby vaginally. Or so I thought. Apparently people can suffer these issues at any age, whether they gave birth or not. And kegels don’t help. Kegels make things worse. For me, at any rate.

I like to think of a hand holding a raw egg. If you don’t hold it firmly enough, it’ll slip through your fingers and you’ll have a mess on the floor. Hold it too tightly, you’ll crush it. Result is the same.

The latter is my problem. So, I’ve been working on relaxation exercises and techniques for my pelvic floor muscles. That’s going well and helping a lot. More recently, we’ve added in core-strengthening exercises (“snugs,” she calls them). It is so difficult to clench one set of muscles while keeping others relaxed! I had no idea. We talked about diastasis recti, and the exercises recommended for that. She asked me to demonstrate, then: “Can you do that without clenching your glutes?” Um, no?

So that’s what I’m working on.

This morning, I decided to get back to my old 20-situps-a-day routine, which I 100% let slide when I was sick. Hard to do while trying to keep other parts relaxed at the same time! I also tried planking, which lasted all of 40 seconds. Ah well. Baby steps...