The good news is that my genitofemoral nerves are now calm. We tried to find the trigger points at the appointment today and both the left and the right points are indetectable. (Trigger point = poke lower abdomen >>>>> horrifying pain in my vulva.) And the pudendal nerves, we're assuming, are still quiet. I didn't ask him to "look" inside with his fingers to confirm. Fuck the pudendal portion. All of my pain is north of my urethra, so even if my pudendal nerves are still irritated, they are not at play. Or if they are, it's the clitoral branch of the right pudendal nerve that's the problem, which is apparently hard to treat via injection.
Oh yeah, so my pain is mostly in the upper left quadrant if you're looking at a cooch with the clitoris pointing north. Or on the front right side if you're me. But there is resonant pain elsewhere.
So as I was poking around trying out my trigger points today, the part that hurt worst was along the right panty line, the point that I've told 3940223849320894839024893 doctors about. So Dr. A folded my left leg up first and twisted it and I felt no pain in that hip. He did the same with the right leg and that point pinched and spread along my leg. And he said it's arthritis.
Despite 039480923890328493081948393 doctors and physical therapists saying that it couldn't be and 39248023990834 of them saying that as my X-ray didn't show arthritis, I couldn't have it.
Now I go for an intra-articular injection in my hip along the panty line.
Maybe this is why the anesthetic that went along with the right-side genitofemoral blocks made my pain go away. Because it was broad enough to include the hip. But the steroid does not affect such a broad area, so the results from the steroid weren't long-term. And maybe that's why the diagnostic (anesthetic-only) block I had that almost eliminated my pain was also the one that knocked out power to my right leg.
And maybe this explains the weird swelling I've had occasionally on either side of the right panty line that 958049 doctors said was nothing because it wasn't a blood clot and I'm young.
And maybe this is why I have occasional all-over irritation around that hip.
And maybe this is why going on a four-hour hike has me dragging my foot up the stairs on the way up to my apartment.
And maybe this means I won't hike the Appalachian Trail after all.
And maybe this is why sitting for a long time or having my leg at weird angles makes my hip pain worse and makes my leg feel weak.
And maybe this is why certain leg positions give me more vulva pain.
And maybe this explains why food makes my pain worse but not consistently. Because it's about inflammation, at least in part.
And maybe this means that if I had been a 60-year-old woman when my pain started, doctors would've looked beyond the vag 9348203984102 years earlier.
I always bitched that they were pigeonholing me because of my age. Maybe I was right to find issue there.
I am glad I don't have pain shooting to my vulva from higher up my genitofemoral nerves. That is good. It sucks, BTW.
I don't know what this means big-picture-wise. What the fuck is wrong with me that I have two sets of fucked-up nerves and a fucked-up hip? Did the latter cause the former?
Is this why having a lovely night of sex for the first time in 300000000000000 years kicked off my pelvic pain 948502948529084290852 years ago? Because my hip was doing things it wasn't used to? Or did I injure it that night? And my pain kept digging and digging as I tried to compensate for the injury?
Will all the psychosomatic parts of my pain fall away now, please, if they are present? Like maybe chocolate actually makes my pain better and I was just fooling myself and I should eat as much as possible?
I'm not telling anyone when my next appointment is. I still need people to ignore that part of my life and talk to me about regular things. Some people get a pass. Like my grandma. It can still be the first words out of her mouth when she calls. But I went into my appointment today ready to tell the doc I was going to give up for a while, and now that I have a house of cards to build again, I need to stay out of the wind.
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