I am trying to remain calm; I have done amazingly well until this morning at 4:45 when I woke up fully on my own half due to stressing I think and the other half from pain that is likely in part due to the stress (love life haha).
Today is the day I have in theory be “waiting for” for over a year and a half now. That is a fucking long time if you think about it, it’s sad that it’s taken till now for doctors to possibly figure out what is wrong/not wrong with my bladder and why I have such issues with it and pain along with said issues.
When I say “waiting for” I haven’t really been waiting for today, I have been waiting for a doctor to take me seriously, my issues are something that even shocked the urologist when I saw one for the first time a month ago. He wondered why I hadn’t been sent to him sooner and I explained that no one seemed to care. I tried to make the docs understand, and so did my mother to no effect. It actually took my being with my grandmother for a week (after warning her that she might not be able to make/keep plans) while I was there due to either my pain or my bladder, and then witnessing the issues all week long, and getting so frustrated that she ended up on the phone with my gynaecologist (my Endo specialist) who didn’t seem to care that there is often blood in my urine. After that he finally referred me to a specialist.
So today is the day I see the urologist doctors at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto again, and have a procedure done. The reason I am stressing and nauseated at the moment is the thought of that procedure. I will be having a cystoscopy sometime this afternoon. For many people I am sure they have had one and it was no big deal, but since the reason I am having one is that my bladder/urethra =pain to me the thought of them shoving a camera/tube up it is not exactly happy. Then add that my understanding of this procedure means they will also fill my bladder (another painful thing for me) while looking around inside also not exactly joy inspiring.
All this will be done with only local freezing so I get to be completely alert! Joy. Though last week when I asked my pain doctor about how a cystoscopy happens he explained to me and I them mentioned my anxiety and asked if they will be giving me anything to relax me, he said no. Now I was more worried, but he sat and thought for a minute (I was hoping if I mentioned this issue to him he might come up with a solution perhaps prescribe me one pill of something to calm me down) well he concluded that what I should do was take Demerol before my appointment, even if I wasn’t needing it for pain. Though looking at the past couple of days I will likely already be on Demerol for pain, but I might take a second one for the purpose of calming me down so I don’t kick any doctors.
The other thing is besides the procedure there are many things that might be involved today that I am uncomfortable with. Believe it or not I do not enjoy being exposed not even to doctors (and far too many have seen my girly bits over the years). I hate hospital gowns. But I think aside from the actual procedure my biggest fear from what I have heard might be entailed is that the nurses might shave me before the procedure. Scott when I confessed this fear to him asked why I don’t do it myself, and I said well honestly even if I do it might not be well enough to make them happy. The more important issue is my skin is being really sensitive this week so if I shave unneeded it won’t be nice, but if they shave me it might be doubly not nice. Who knows?
The interesting thing about all this is that by the end of today I might know why I have such issues with my bladder and might be told how to treat the issues. That could be awesome. The other interesting this is that for the past 3days I had to keep a “urinary diary” and because of this I have gotten a very good idea as to how much is the max my bladder can hold. Or at least hold before it starts hurting due to pushing on other things inside me or stretching. The thing that worried me though is for my diary my bladder has been on decently good behaviour, making me of course look like a liar (though it often goes for days and days between times where it causes me frequency issues like ever 10minutes) but still, but then just now it started to pull its same old crap so today’s diary might show a slight window into how my bladder can also prevent me from leaving the house at times.
So as it stands if the apointment is on time it could be as little as 5hours untill the dreaded cystoscopy. ugh!
