It’s pain journaltime! (No Youtube video this time…I’ve been waiting to have the time to record one, but May is almost over!!). Sorry about the tardiness.

Let’s see…how was April?

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(If you’d rather hear/watch me instead of read, here’s the Youtube video!)

April is half-way over and I’m just now publishing March? That should be an indication of how April has been going! Ha! I received my second Covid-19 vaccination in early April and had some dental work this week…both of which had knocked me on my butt and I’m JUST NOW getting to writing!

Let’s see…how was March?

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Today is February 1st, and I’m bound and determined to get this pain journal on time!! If you’d prefer to watch a video instead of reading, here’s a wee video:

But if you’d rather read (or do both), there’s not much to talk about, but plenty to celebrate!

Let’s see:

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September flew by all too quickly. October is now upon us! And hopefully I’ll find out when my next surgery will be! So much to look forward to.

I was certain I was going to skip my period, but alas it just started very late. LOL. Damn thing. I was due around the week of the 8th, and I thought that I was going to start with the full-gambit of pain I had that week. But…nope. I started 15 days later.

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Another month is behind us. I have my consultation with my surgeon on September 15th to discuss my deep-infiltrating Endometriosis on my sigmoid colon and (hopefully) schedule a surgery with he and my colo-rectal surgeon to handle it.

So, in preparation for those meetings, I’ve been tinkering with my pain journal with how better to visualize or express my symptoms to others. And here’s what I’ve come up with:

As you can see, while I was on my period (the cells shaded red), pain levels were higher across the board, and more consistent on a daily basis. The “glass guts” feeling when I poop has calmed down a lot to where it’s just a painful sharp stabbing when I go half the time. And pretty much most of the other pain I experienced during the month is an odd sharp stabbing or ache every once in a while on the right or left of my lower abs.

A third of the month, I experienced days of pain of the lower left side (hello, Sigmoid Colon?). And 20% of the month had pain on the lower right abs, don’t ask me why. Most of the 12-16% of lower uterine/middle abdomen pain and lower back pain occurred while I was on my period.

Here’s the usual daily pain and food tracker, if you’re ever interested in the play-by-play:

And I still track my bowel movements and pain on a separate tracker. What goes in must come out, eh? This chart will be of particular importance to me as I head in for my bowel consultations.

During the month of August, I poo’d 41 times. Only 25 of those times were pain-free, so a little more than half. Every date on this chart represents a poo. If there’s multiple dates (like the 3rd, for example), I poo’d multiple times that day. If there’s a blue line, it means it hurt with a regular poo. If there’s a red line, it was diarrhea with pain. So, for example, on August 14 I poo’d and it stabbed through my guts with an 8 out of 10 pain level. Ugh. And the most painful poos (8 out of 10) only occurred while I was on my period. If there’s a date with no blue or red line, it was a pain-free poo.

And the charts continue! Of my August poops, 63% of them were diarrhea. That’s alotta shit. Well, a lot of loose shit…

And of those loose and watery bowel movements, a whopping 64% of them were pain-free. But when it did hurt, it varied between a 1-8 on the pain scale.

What about the logs? Of those solid non-liquid poos, half of them were pain-free also. And when it hurt, it ranged from a 1-8 out of 10 as well.

Overall, I’m super pleased with August. I only needed one Naproxen for my pain, and that was during my period. The four Ibuprofen I took in August were for headaches and not related to any Endometriosis pain.

I’m intrigued with the poo-data and look forward to sharing with my doctors. And would still like to pursue a path of colo-rectal surgery to look at and remove the DIE on my sigmoid colon. Perhaps after it’s gone, my bowel movements can become more consistently pain-free and solid.

How was your August?