Recently I experienced the longest flare i’ve had in a very long time. Quite possibly the longest continuous flare i’ve ever had.
It lasted about two weeks straight. And when I say straight, I mean straight. It didn’t let up at all. There were days where I looked just as bloated as I felt, and there were days where I looked completely normal size and still felt like I was about to birth a whale calf. But that abdominal pressure, and pain, and overall discomfort was nothing compared to the painsomnia.
Painsomnia
It’s a real thing.
It makes EVERYTHING worse. The pain is the reason you’re awake, but the sleep deprivation increases the pain, increases the nausea, the exhaustion [obviously], and your overall feeling of absolute shit. Painsomnia assists in the creation of the most vicious circle of WTF you’ve ever experienced in your life. Not only are you nauseous and feeling pressure equivalent to a NASA shuttle launch, but you are moody about absolutely everything and want to make an enemy out of everyone, because you no longer give a shit.
Trying to be nice during a flare can be a struggle and a half, if i’m being honest. Sometimes you feel so weak that you’re just going to roll over and accept almost anything that comes your way, and sometimes you’re so exhausted and hangry that you think if someone looked at you with even a suggestion of speaking in your direction, you’d stab them. The irritation can be REAL. And you can’t always eat to cure the hangry either, because nausea and vomiting is, of course, a thing. When painsomnia is a factor, everything is tenfold because on top of the nausea, hangryness, pain & pressure, you are both mentally and physically exhausted from lack of sleep.
Doing anything during a bad flare period is a struggle. So typically if there’s going to be a rest period, it’s during the flare. On the upside, the immune system takes a dive during a flare because your body is far too busy fighting with itself to bother with anything that’s actually threatening. So at least you’re sick at the same time as the flare, meaning your rest period and sick days come together nicely. It’s the positive things 🙂
In my case, my bad flare coincided with a very annoying cold and many, many news reports about the rapid spread of Coronavirus into Japan, where I just came from two weeks earlier.
Yeah it was not a good time.
Having a flare like that is one of those things that makes you forget a lot of other things. Like the fact that I should have been posting more about said flare to my endometriosisanderika Instagram, since it’s literally about life with endometriosis. But truthfully I haven’t gotten the hang of posting every single thing i’m feeling yet. When I feel that bad, my first instinct is, shockingly, not to take a photo of myself and post it. I do try my best on that page to be authentic with photos, meaning I do usually take them as a flare happens in order to relay accurate information into what endometriosis is like. Which is one of the main points of the page. But when you feel as terrible as I did during that two weeks, it’s not happening. You don’t even want to be human anymore, let alone bother with social media.
That’s the real truth to it. When you feel as horrible as many people with endometriosis feel during a flare, and frequently, you don’t feel human. And you don’t feel like you even want to be human anymore.
RDJ with the cold hard facts
The llama thing was meant to be the end of this blog. But in all seriousness, the way you sometimes feel [mentally] during a flare can be incredibly difficult to deal with. I would be flat out lying if I said that not waking up one day has never crossed my mind. It has. Unfortunately it’s a thought that wiggles its way in when you are in frequent pain for years and years, with no end in sight. And I know for a fact that I am not the only person to have had these thoughts in relation to endometriosis. To be clear, I have no intention of ending my life and any thoughts I have in relation to that are quickly extinguished. I have seen what suicide does to the people who are left behind, and I could never, and would never, do that to my loved ones. I also think that there is far more to this life than the pain and discomfort and that the world will be better served with me as a part of it. However, these can be complicated, and confusing thoughts. And if anyone reading this right now is familiar with the darker thoughts surrounding chronic pain, or any area of your life, please don’t hesitate to reach out to some kind of support system. Or me, if you want, it’s totally up to you.
There are a number of hotlines set up around the world that can connect you to people and services that can help you. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, click the button below.
The Blog of Erika 