so I had surgery
I have been battling pain and mental instability for over twenty years now - basically, I hit puberty and my body and brain started falling apart. I distinctly remember being 12 and doing the math in my head to figure out how long it would be until menopause, because I was absolutely miserable and wanted it all to go away. And that was before it got bad in my late teens.
When I turned 30, everything suddenly got very bad. My pain - already significant - got much, much worse. I have been on narcotic painkillers for three years, including while I was pregnant because my care providers and I decided that the benefits outweighed the risks. A few months after my son was born, I also started losing my mind. As in "kept the number for the inpatient psych ward handy in case the xanax didn't work this time." I am not joking.
I'm lucky. I have amazing doctors who believed me and didn't just send me away with a prescription for Prozac. Although we did try that, for three days, until I started walking into walls and my blood pressure shot up to 150/100 and I got yet another notation in the "allergies and adverse reactions" section of my chart. We tried a LOT of things over the years - drugs, elimination diets, exercise, acupuncture, chiropractors, herbs, vitamins, yoga, aquatic exercise, psychotherapy, you name it I have probably tried it. Nothing worked.
Some things helped a little, but it was like throwing a glass of water at a raging fire. I could barely work. I was on a first-name basis with everybody at the pharmacy and my doctor's offices. My utterly beloved son knew what "mama's too sick to play with you right now" meant by the time he was 15 months old. I was surviving, but I wasn't living.
Finally we did a trial of Lupron, which is a drug that puts the body into temporary menopause. The side effects tend to be horrific, and it can only be used for six months, maybe a year at most. It's a last resort. My doctor asked what I wanted to try next, I told her I was done trying things and wanted a hysterectomy, she said that was "not unreasonable" but asked me to try Lupron for a month so we could be certain that menopause would actually help, and I agreed because I didn't really have anything to lose at that point.
Within a week of the injection, I felt better than I had in years, even with the side effects. (ALL MIGRAINE ALL THE TIME, WITH A SIDE OF BRAIN WEASELS!) Menopause was wonderful. I scheduled the hysterectomy as soon as I was able to line up childcare.
On May 8th, they took out everything - uterus, ovaries, the works. I woke up from anesthesia feeling like someone had thrown a switch in my head - my brain was QUIET. By the time I left the hospital the next day, my pain was no worse than it usually was, and I was off narcotics completely five days later. At a week post-op, I'm fatiguing easily and I have to rest a lot, but I'm feeling better than I have in years, my pain is minimal, and I feel sane. SANE.
It should only get better from here.