What's Next??

I had my follow up appointment with my doctor a few days ago.  Not much was what I wanted to hear, and it took me some time to just be at peace with everything.  But I’ve had a lot of friends and family asking me “What’s next?” “What’s the plan?” “How do you take care of it?”  So I wanted to share what the next few months will be like.

Dr. Howard has me on 3 medications at this time – Hyoscyamine (HyoMax), Letrozole (Femara), and Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq).  The Femara and Pristiq are to get me ready for 4 months of Leuprolide (Lupron) injections.

The HyoMax is to help control IBS.  For patients with endometriosis, there are often 4 things present – the endometriosis, PMS, IBS, and PCOS.  I’ve had IBS since I was 16 years old.  The past 6 or 7 years it has been pretty severe and something I’ve had to deal with on a daily basis. 

Dr. Howard had me taking the HyoMax 2 at a time twice a day after my initial consultation with him.  This drugs purpose is to “dry things up” – needless to say, my sinuses, mouth, and everything else was about as dried up as it could be.  I started to have nosebleeds and couldn’t talk because my mouth was so dry.  A few days after those side effects started, my vision started going blurry…and by blurry, I mean I couldn’t focus on an elephant if it was right in front of my face. 

Needless to say, this scared me enough to get completely off of the medication.  I’m now taking one pill, once a day, and I’m taking them at night before I go to sleep so that I can sleep through the side effects.

The Lupron injections will essentially put me through menopause.  The goal is for me to have my period in October and then start taking the injection once it comes in the mail.  Every time I have a period, the endometriosis continues to grow.  It “feeds” what is already there and can continue to damage the fembria – which considering I have 25% functionality between both of mine, I can’t really afford much more damage.

The injections are to stop my period and essentially, remove all of the estrogen from my body.  Estrogen is what feeds the endometriosis. 

The Femara is a drug that is normally given to patients that have a likelihood of developing breast cancer.  For endometriosis patients, it is used to keep our bodies from turning testosterone into estrogen, something that natuarally happens in my body.  I am taking twice the normal dose (once pill in the morning and one at night), and the only side effect is some pretty serious yawns.  I feel tired.  I don’t feel like I could pass out asleep sitting at my desk or driving to work, but it causes me to feel incredibly tired 2 to 3 hours after I take the pill for about 3 or 4 hours.  I’m pretty sure I yawn 50 times a day!  Luckily I sleep through the second pill.

The Pristiq is my least favorite.  I spent 2 or 3 years 2 different times in my life on antidepressants.  In June of 2011 when Brad and I decided to get off birth control, I also decided to get off my antidepressants so that I wouldn’t have them in my system when I got pregnant.  My goal was to learn ways to naturally overcome depression and hoped to never take them again.

In this case, the Pristiq is used to help “mellow” things out while I’m going through “menopause.”  Once I’m done with the injections, I’ll be able to wean myself off of them.

The plan for the injections and the other medications is to “starve” the endometriosis that is in my body and keep my body from making any new endometriosis.  I have a uterus full of a nasty mess of stuff that makes my life miserable and will make carrying a baby extremely difficult.  The goal is to have a cleaner uterus in four months, and then Brad and I will be able to start trying to get pregnant again.

Once we are able to get pregnant, I’ll have about a year and a half of a period-free life, which will continue to heal my body.  After the baby is born, I’ll start taking birth control, skipping the placebo pills for the purpose of not having a period.  Dr. Howard hopes that I have my period in October and then never have another one…we’ll see how that goes! ;) Not that I would argue with it.

This will be my second time going through the injections, although I’ll be on a stronger dose in a shorter amount of time.  I took them 5 years ago after I had my surgery for the first time.  The plan was the same at that time, to not have a period for 6 months so that my body could heal…I ended up having a period for 45+ straight days.  This is my BIGGEST prayer request over the next several months…that my body reacts as it should to this treatment so that I don’t have to do this ever again and so that I can safely carry my babies in my own tummy.