Posts Tagged ‘ovarian cysts’
Posted on January 5th, 2009 at 3:06 pm under News & Updates

It’s time to make lists of things that I feel should be listed! Here we go!

My holiday gifts:

Hmm…did I miss anything?

The Ailments to Date — cue the ominous music!

  • Ovarian cysts (15 years and counting)
    • I’ve had 2 laparoscopies to aspirate them as well as more combinations of birth control pills and hormone therapies to try to control them than I care to count. They’re reasonably under control now, but I still have pain a couple times a month. The general concensus is that they’re a result of endometriosis.
  • Migraines (11 years and counting)
    • Took me forever to find a doctor that was even willing to treat them, but I’m on a cocktail of anti-depressants and blood pressure medications that keep them at bay —  mostly.
  • Fibromyalgia (diagnosed August 2008)
    • One walk-in emergency clinic, two PCMs, two rheumatologists, a bone scan, several x-rays, and countless blood tests and physical exams later, it’s official: fibro. The joint pain, overwhelming fatigue, body aches, over-sensitivity to certain stimuli (pain, heat, cold), and inability to focus on just about anything most days really isn’t all in my head.
  • Polycystic Kidney Disease (diagnosed October 2008)
    • All the blood work I’d had done on the way to my fibro diagnosis alerted my various doctors to an unexplained elevated creatinine level. After meeting with a nephrologist and discussing my family and personal medical histories, he ordered an ultrasound to look for cysts. (My dad and his mother both had one non-functioning kidney, probably congenital, and PKD in the remaining one, along with high blood pressure issues; I’d already passed a kidney stone by age 24, and had been in a car accident in ’97 that banged them up pretty bad.) Nothing showed on the ultrasound, but he was sure something was going on, so in I went for a CT scan. Sure enough, cysts ahoy. I’m pretty asymptomatic at this point, but my dad’s functioning kidney isn’t doing so hot, and I remember my grandma living with dialysis for years, so I know what can happen to me down the line. Thankfully, it was caught pretty early, and with medication and diet management, I might never have symptoms. Then again, my kidneys could fail in 5 or 10 years. Good times! :p

I think I’m all listed out. Mmm, clam chowder time…

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