I've detailed it over there, but the short version is I finally had that ultrasound I needed, and I have a cyst the size of a tennis ball on my left ovary. On the ultrasound, it looked like a black ping pong ball parked in my pelvis -- almost perfectly round and smooth, floating inside a greyish chamber.
I hadn't had any problems with it (and I didn't know what it was) until last Thursday. My co-workers thought I was crazy. I was going into dark rooms to lie on my stomach and do some simple yoga poses to see if it was just a cramp I could stretch out. But every position was uncomfortable. I would try to sit at my desk and work, but after only a minute or so I began to whimper and grind my teeth in pain. Scared out of my mind, I signed up for short-term insurance to at least keep me covered until my policy at work starts in November. But I couldn't go to the doctor until Friday, when my policy kicked in. Jason picked me up from work at around 2:45, and by the time we got back to the apartment I felt much better. I thought the maybe the vibration of the car ride helped soothe whatever was bothering me. I even felt like a wuss for leaving work since I had stopped being in pain. But after about 30 minutes, the pain came back in full force, whimpering and all. When I barely slept through the night, we decided to make an appointment with the gynecologist.
The horrific experience that was my last pelvic exam was still fresh in my mind when I got to the hospital. I was on the verge of tears as I went into the examination room, but my doctor immediately put me at ease. I didn't even feel the speculum go in when she did the exam, and it took all of 10 minutes for her to diagnose my cyst. We headed to the ultrasound room and were out of the hospital with prescriptions for vicodin and birth control in under an hour.
The cyst has left me with a weird feeling, because it's serious and not serious at the same time. It's not doing anything to me right now. If the severe pain comes back, it's because the cyst is cutting off the blood supply to the ovary and that's serious. If it grows at all, that's serious. Surgery is something I want to avoid; I go back a week from Friday for another ultrasound, and I'm doing everything I can to will the cyst to shrink so I don't have to have the operation. Because I'm between periods, I can't even start the birth control -- which helps cysts shrink in some women -- until after that second ultrasound. So, we'll see what happens. In the mean time, my pain is now a mild, very mild cramp. Somewhere between a cramp and that feeling you get when you eat too much. So, back to the gym I go.
