Terrified

I'm terrified of labor. If I'm in this much pain now, imagine how it will be when the baby is bigger, and when contractions are wracking my body. I'm all alone, and my days consist of trying to ease the pain, enjoying the very few moments when those methods have worked, hoping the food or drink I've eaten will stay down and not cause more pain, and sleeping. I have an appointment with a new pain management doctor tomorrow afternoon. I'm trying to think of how to lay it all out. You would think that it would be easy to explain to a pain doctor how much pain you are in, but it's not. The best explanations I come up with get a general murmur of assent and then we continue with a line of treatment that doesn't work. If I'm going to care for this baby properly, in my womb and after I've given birth, we have to come up with something better than pumping me full of medications that, while helping my symptoms, do not offer full relief and still render me a helpless invalid.

Part of me is wondering if I'm just cursed. It's been six years, seven months, and two days. And we're no closer to knowing what is causing my pain, though we've ruled out just about everything. Are the procedures they could do to help really any more dangerous to my baby than all of the drugs I'm forced to take? My Stadol prescription is for one puff per day. One! Let's come back to reality. On a good day, I'll take two. On a bad day...six to eight? Honestly, I don't keep count. I take it when I need it. But this pain is scaring me. The thoughts it puts in my head are disturbing. I can't even repeat them. But I'm terrified of reaching a limit. I don't know how much pain a person can stand, and I've been in so much for so long. Eventually there has to be a breaking point. It's like I've been blindfolded and spun around, and told that somewhere nearby there's a cliff, don't fall! And I try so hard not to find the edge, and all I want is to know with certainty whether I'm headed for safety or doom. But I can't see anything. And after suffering through blindness and fear for so long, eventually I stop caring which way I'm headed. Maybe that's the freedom of it. Except I do care. I care for me, I care for my family, and I care for this life that is depending on me to keep fighting. Except I don't know what's left to fight with. Uncertainty rules my life, and I'm asked to make impossible choices. Do I reject medication for the good of my child? Or do I take it so that my body has a better chance of caring for that child, as without it I cannot provide nourishment or health?

I'm all alone. It's me or nothing. And I can't do it anymore.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to my appointment. And afterwards, I'm going to arrange to send my dogs to my parents. I'm going to find someone to hire to come take care of my cats. And I'm going to call my midwife, and have her check me in to the hospital again. It's the only way. The only way to make sure that my baby is safe. Safe from me. It's the only way.