May

This past nine months has been... A doozy, to describe it nicely.

In May, the stomach pain began one day at school. I remember being late to all of my classes because it hurt so bad to walk and even having to change my outfit just so I could leave my pants un-done because they put so much pressure on my stomach. For about a week, I dismissed the excruciating cramps as "just that time of the month." However, as almost two weeks had passed, the pain increased and became worse and worse to the point where I couldn't even walk anymore. I had stopped going to school and was not even able to move out of my bed. At this point, me and my mom knew that this was not normal and there had to be something else going on.

We went to my primary care doctor with complaints of a horrible pain on the lower right quadrant of my abdomen. Due to the symptoms and my vital signs, my doctor decided that I could have a case of appendicitis. With tears flowing steadily and a hurried heartbeat, we rushed to the nearest hospital.

I laid in a hospital bed for almost four and a half hours, heavily sedated with morphine, before they decided that I did not have appendicitis, but instead a severe stomach infection. I was sent home with antibiotics and pain medication, but we all felt like there was something not quite right about my diagnosis.

About three weeks later, after I had finished off both the antibiotic and the pain killers, we returned to a hospital closer to my house, with complaints of the same persistent severe stomach pain. I hadn't felt a whole lot of pain in my short fifteen years... No broken bones... No teeth pulled... But this kind of pain was unreal. This was indescribable. It was the most excruciating pain I could ever imagine just radiating all over my body. I could hardly sit up, I couldn't walk without help, and forget even being awake without breaking into tears.

By the third hospital visit, we found a cyst on my left ovary. It was big enough to cause all of this pain, but small enough that all they could do was give me pain medication and wait for the cyst to burst on its own.

They waited to release me until I felt like I had the pain under control. I had been unable to eat because of the ultrasounds and CT scans they were running on me all day, so after I called all of my immediate family and friends to deliver the news, I was scarfing down cracker packages and jello. The nurse shift change and a very rude emergency nurse came into my room and completely re-did my IV.

Back story time! I forgot to mention that I have very "hard veins." We all know how painful an IV is, however my veins roll very easily, making an IV near IMPOSSIBLE to get done! It can take between 45 minutes, to even an hour and a half, just to set me up with an IV!

So! This nurse had just stressed me out so badly that the stomach pain had increased and so had the amount of tears! The stomach pain became so bad that I literally became light headed and dizzy. They had to bring my previous nurse back in to help calm me back down and re-do everything for the third time. At this point we actually thought that my cyst had burst, so after about two hours with my motherly nurse, I went back home.

The pain continued but more subtly than it had before, so I assumed it was normal. After about three weeks, we returned to the hospital for a fourth time, but there was nothing they could do for what was now considered chronic pain. I was sent to a gynecologist.

I remember walking into the office and getting dirty looks from older pregnant women. Although there are several reasons you can go into an OBGYN, in this day and age, you see a teenager holding her swollen stomach and walking into that office with tears in her eyes, it's just assumed that she's pregnant.

The reflection in the door was horrifying. I didn't even look like the Kaitlin I knew anymore. My skin was pale and my face was gaunt. Dark circles wore underneath my eyes and the usual trendy Kaitlin was lost in baggy layers of sweats and sloppy up-dos.

I sat down, almost sobbing at this point, because of the walk from the car to the waiting room. I didn't know what to expect, but I was not excited for whatever was to come. After about thirty minutes, I was called into a room where I met with the physicians' assistant so she could get a few details for the nurse practitioner since there were no doctors available.

The nurse practitioner was rude and impersonal. Two things that I did not need at this stage in the game. I cried through my first-ever exam and even as she forced me to decide between selecting a Nuva-Ring or a shot because she had to put me on some form of birth control to decrease my level of progesterone RIGHT NOW. I selected a shot and continued onto the blood work that the office needed for some tests. Because of course all they could do was give me another shot, take some more blood, give me a prescription that did nothing for my pain, and send me on my way to this never-ending nightmare my life had become.

I thought this was it. This was my new life and I had to just get used to it.