Trauma Response

I am officially on spring break, so of course I scheduled doctor's appointments. I see the knee surgeon tomorrow about my non-titanium knee, which has been a bit less collapse-y but still not right. Can you guess what appointment I had today that left me feeling drained, exhausted, and a bit weepy?

Ten points to Ravenclaw if you guessed my annual exam at the GYN. 

I get an ultrasound with my annual to soothe my wretched anxiety around my ovaries. Because I fruitlessly pumped them full of estrogen for years to harvest eggs, some of which became embryos, none of which became babies...I worry that they will turn around and try to kill me. So I like to keep tabs on them, since ovaries gone bad are sneaky and there's no mammogram-like screening for them. 

All was good, although when I explained my reasoning for the ultrasound to the technician, she was like, "oh no, you must think positively!" Uhhhh, yeahhhhhhh. 

I didn't have to explain that I had no uterus since she actually read my chart, which was refreshing, but she did ask why I was so young to have had a hysterectomy. So I got to explain that story (minus the fact that the doctor who did my endomyometrial resection was all over the news for using his own sperm instead of the donors he told women were the source and was caught by 23 and Me when those resulting babies were adults, and then he died in a plane crash last year). I said fertility treatment was likely never going to work for me, because it turned out I had adenomyosis, so my lining was all through the very thick walls of my uterus, but I didn't know that until the offending organ was out. 

And then she told me that high end ultrasound machines can now diagnose adenomyosis. Which is great for future humans... Not so much for me. 

Can you believe my blood pressure was high when I went in afterward for my actual annual?

I felt tired and gross after all the poking and prodding. I was all out of sorts the rest of today. It is so crazy how your body totally remembers. How that appointment set off an exhaustion that initially felt unwarranted, until I remembered -- oh yeah, this is all kinds of triggering. I forget until GYN appointments and blood draws how much this lives in my body, even though my last cycle was in January of 2015, almost 10 years ago. 

I took a nap. I really had nothing I had to do today. I feel better now, but I'm really glad that's only a once a year thing.