My Unmentionable Problem

Thursday I woke up with a really bad pain in my side that made it hard to move around.  Sounds freaky, but really, given my life of ongoing body things, I did a "WTF," decided that since it was hard to sit up I probably shouldn't go to school, and went back to sleep for six hours.

The pain got better the next day, but when I try to bend or sit certain ways it's still uncomfortable.

It's my lower left side, by my hip, not near any kidneys or spleens or pancreases or livers or gallbladders, and unless my inner organs are reversed, it's not near my appendix either.  So it's my intestines unless I sleepwalked Wednesday night and really took a hit to my hip.

Having IBS, I'm used to intestinal weirdness, but the pain on Thursday was much worse than the usual disturbances.  I've also pooped multiple times since then and was pretty regular leading up to that day, so it's probably not simply that I'm backed up.

The day before the pain, though, I tried some gluten-free chocolate bars that I will never eat again.  They're basically brownies, and that kind of chocolate doesn't usually set off my IBS.  But oh, it did.  It was non-explosive but epic, the way everything in my gut started churning around instantly and the amount of poop that came out of me that day.

So now I have to go to the doctor, obviously.  Pretty obviously.  Somewhere in my head I still want to wait it out because that's what I've been doing forever.  And somewhere in my head I'm freaking insane over having constant pain and angry at the universe for not fixing it already.

But I will go.

In the past I've had a lot of health anxiety over stuff like this, but vulvodynia really massaged that away.  My resistance now is due to frustration, not worry.  I am concerned that it might be something serious -- particularly that it might be dislocated ovary/uterus/babymaking pain -- but these days it's easier for me to take these things as they come.

Which is another point in favor of vulvodynia.

Short-term vulvodynia.  Okay, medium-term.  After a while, the returns diminish.

Funny, a few weeks ago I was thinking, I wish I could get a colonoscopy or at least go back to the gut doc.  There's too much activity down there; what if something is seriously wrong?  But how will I get them to take me seriously?  Thank you, Jeannie.

This post is named after the King of the Hill episode "Hank's Unmentionable Problem."  Hank doesn't poop for four days due to a beef-filled colon.  He gets scoped and scheduled for surgery to remove the blockage, but he has a breakthrough expressing himself emotionally and drops one just in time.

I often wonder if that's what my vulvodynia is waiting for.  Some kind of personal breakthrough.  But I've had like a billion of them and the damn coochie claw is still there.  If anyone can tell me what I'm missing, personally, in my development that might appease my downstairs demon, I'd really appreciate it.

If only my life were a cartoon.  Yep.