Endopocalypse

By Nicole Jones

Endopocalypse by Nicole Jones: Endometriosis won’t kill you, but it will make you wish you were dead. There really isn’t a single aspect of your life that won’t be affected by this disease: your health, your relationships, your work, and your emotions. This book accounts one woman’s year long journey through symptoms, diagnosis, doctors and “treatment.” You will laugh and you will cry. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicole Jones
• Release date: Jul 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310118197

Nicole Jones

NICOLE JONES is the self-proclaimed Master of Single, she values her life experiences and is inspired to help singles own their status.A first time author, seasoned television reporter, host, producer, actor, model, and still her proudest accomplishment is mastering her single life.She loves love but won't settle for less than she deserves. She cherishes her mom above all, prides herself on her long-standing friendships, sisterhoods, and is obsessed with her sweet doggie Dior.

Book preview

Endopocalypse

By Nicole Jones

Published by Nicole Jones at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Nicole Jones

ISBN 9781310118197

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

To all the women suffering this affliction: you are not alone.

To the doctors and nurses who see patients suffering: please be sympathetic and really listen.

To anyone who loves someone who suffers from this disease: be supportive and forgive.

To my husband: thank you for loving me even when I’m crazy.

To my daughter: I love you and I hope you never suffer this way.

To my sister who believed in my writing: I will see you again!

To Jessica: you were an inspiration. I miss you and love you!

To myself: you are stronger than you know.

A special thanks to Derek Zarn for the amazing cover of this book!

CONTENTS

The Journey Begins

Maybe It’s Allergies

I Hate Mother Nature And She Hates Me

XYCrazy Gene

That Just Happens Sometimes

Hormones Are Crazy

Endometriosis

Bitches

Cut Me Open Already!

Should’ve Taken 4 Ears

Must Be Your Vagina

Welcome To My Vagina

We’re Getting Old

Back To The Beginning

It’s A Zebra

I Kick

Finally Hopeful

Attack of the Crotchosaurus

Desperate But Not That Desperate

From the Author

The Journey Begins

As I was finishing this book I went to an advisor. I was agonizing how this story would end. How my story would end. Her words were wise. It is not about the ending. It is about the journey. It is about learning about yourself and letting others know they do not suffer alone. It is about sharing the experience. It is about shining the light in the darkest of places. Names and locations have been changed to protect those involved, but the story is very real.

It started in May with three weeks of constant headaches. The kind that almost make you sick to your stomach. I was taking anything I could get my hands on. Tylenol, Advil, Aleve, Excedrin Migraine. There was a lot of stress at home and work. My in-laws were coming, my daughter started driving and we were gearing up for busy season at work.

We had a temp in the office with a nails on chalkboard kind of voice and she talked incessantly. Maybe it was her voice giving me headaches. I had a detached muffler. Maybe I was poisoning myself with carbon dioxide. I fixed the muffler and that didn’t change anything.

Father’s day came and my daughter told me she was no longer a virgin. That night around 8pm the diarrhea began. It was every half hour all night long. Every time I would start to fall asleep, I would have to run to the bathroom. I went through three pairs of pajama bottoms that night. I thought it was something I ate and stayed home from work. The next day I was fine. Wednesday morning I had diarrhea again. I went to work anyway, just went to the bathroom every half hour. I was having a weird feeling up under my right ribcage. It felt like a baby’s foot tucked under there. Not really painful, just a dull ache. Like a stitch in your side after running. It was a nagging feeling so I thought I better go to the doctor.

My doctor was a nurse practitioner. I had a woman crush on her. She was beautiful. She had long blond hair and a perfect body. She is always well dressed and trendy. She had a nice glowing tan, not the leathery look, just like my husband takes me on tropical vacations quarterly kind of look. She is the kind of woman you secretly hate because even when she was pregnant last year, she was beautiful. Of course weeks after the baby popped out she was back to the perfect body. Seriously, who wouldn’t be jealous of that!?

She asked me about my eating habits. Well, let’s see, we started the morning with bacon and eggs, then I went to my parents’ where I had steak, baked beans, baked potatoes, then we went to Dairy Queen where I had a Peanut Butter Delight. For supper we had more steak and corn on the cob – yeah corn and diarrhea don’t mix. The second time I got sick we had Casey’s Meat Galore pizza. As I was listing off all of the delicious food I had celebrated Father’s day with, you could see the look of shock and disgust on her face. Well, I guess when you put it all together, no wonder I’m fat!!

She asked me if I have ever had a gallbladder attack before. No, I didn’t think so. Well one time a couple of years ago I got this terrible pain. It felt like a metal rod had been stuck through my right side and went clear through to the back. The pain lasted for about 8 hours, but the next day I was fine so I thought I had passed a kidney stone. I don’t drink enough water and it runs in my family. She asked if I had gone to the doctor. I said no, but it was shortly after that that I started having these crazy heart palpitations. I have always suffered anxiety, but these were different. I did go to the doctor for that. They did an EKG and I had to wear a Holter Monitor. I didn’t tell her the cardiologist did have some concerns and wanted me to go back for a stress test. I didn’t go because they would just end up telling me it is anxiety anyway. I don’t like being on medication for that. It makes me tired and not care about anything. At that point I just decided the weird flip flops were just feeling my sister near since she died from a heart attack. It gave me a comforting feeling. I didn’t mention that either.

She thought it could be gallbladder and took some blood work even though I had just had my physical at the beginning of the month and scheduled an upper abdominal ultrasound. In the meantime, think about losing some weight. Stop eating fatty foods until we know for sure.

It’s silly but I hadn’t had an ultrasound since I had been pregnant. Even though I had been on Implanon for two years, I couldn’t help but have that fear I was going to hear a fetal heartbeat. You never forget that sound. When you want to be pregnant, that sound is the most amazing and wonderful sound you have ever heard. At 40 with a practically grown daughter and a husband who did NOT want children and being quite financially unstable, that would be a dreadful sound! I had gotten pretty fat since the wedding in November. I was feeling weird movements in my belly added to the baby’s foot feeling, well it was definitely in the back of my mind.

I was watching the screen intently looking for something that would be causing these problems. I saw this spot on my liver (which makes sense since that was where I was feeling something). When I got home, I started googling upper abdominal ultrasounds. There was my first mistake! I came across a picture of a spot on my liver like I had seen and it was a LIVER FLUKE. I started reading up on that. It was a parasite that could be picked up in tropical places and live for 10 years or more in your body. Well, I had been to tropical places in the last 10 years! Oddly enough my friend that I had traveled with, called me and said she had also been having similar symptoms for a long time. She had been to several doctors about it in fact. How could I have not known this?? One of Patricia and my favorite games was to make up stories. The texts went like this:

Me: I’m going to name mine Hermi

Patricia: Lol – mine is Squiggly and Piggly

Me: Mine is a chain smoker that likes fast food and travel

Me: <>

This is my Hermi. He would like a glass of wine to process this new awareness.

Patricia: Lol

Luckily, all tests came back normal! No baby! No problems with my organs. I had to ask, could it be a parasite? No one should ever watch the show Monsters Inside Me. The nurse called back and said the test is expensive, but they would do it if I wanted. She asked about recent travel. Well, no I hadn’t been anywhere recently. Never mind. I was just grasping at straws. It was probably just the stomach flu. Jennifer recommended I stay off the fatty foods anyway and lose some weight. Great! Diagnosis: you are fat!

Maybe It’s Allergies

That Thursday we were all watching America’s Got Talent. I was drinking a Diet Mt Dew and eating my favorite Monster Cookie ice cream. If you have never tried it, you don’t know ecstasy. Peanut butter ice cream with monster cookies (oatmeal, chocolate chips and M&Ms) with chocolate ribbons...mmmm! All of a sudden I felt my lip swelling and fire shot through my veins down my shoulders into my arms. Oh, no! Food allergy! Why hadn’t I thought of that!? My mom and daughter are both allergic to tons of foods! I thought I was just one of the lucky ones. I figured it just skips a generation.

I went back to the doctor and told her of the new incident. Have you ever had an allergic reaction before? Well, a couple of times. My sister and I went to a Mexican restaurant. We were laughing and eating our chips and salsa, drinking margaritas and having a good time. All of a sudden she says, What’s wrong with your face? and I was like, Nothing, what’s wrong with your face?! and she says, No, you better go look in the mirror. So I go to the bathroom and my face has huge red blotches and hives all over! What the hell??? I run next door to the Dollar General and got some generic Benadryl and quickly took it. That was weird! A month later, it was the same thing. Ok, no more margaritas for me, BOO!! Mexican food and Margaritas had been a main staple for me for years. That sucks!

A couple of times I had also had something happen when I ate mixed nuts, but it didn’t happen every time I ate them. I would get these big welts inside my cheeks. At first I thought I must have bitten my cheek or maybe it was the salt on the nuts. Since it didn’t happen every time, I just ignored it.

So she makes a list of foods for me to avoid until I can get in and see the allergist in a month. No dairy, no nuts, no corn and no gluten. Whelp, that was my entire diet in a nutshell – no pun intended. I was STARVING!!! I started losing about 5 pounds a week. I couldn’t find anything to eat. I ate salad every day and meat. I had to give up my cherished chocolate caramel coffee creamer. Black coffee, yuck! After 2 weeks of that, I called the allergy office and told them my plight. I’m DYING to eat something!!! I was getting desperate! They were able to move my appointment up with a different doctor. THANK GOD!

In the meantime, Jennifer at my regular physical had scheduled me for a sleep study. My family was concerned that I had sleep apnea. My grandpa has it and my sister had it and she died from a heart attack. My husband insisted I stopped breathing several times a night. I just knew that every morning I wake up gasping for air. At that point my heart is pumping and I can’t get back to sleep. It is usually 4:30 a.m., but sometimes it is earlier, especially around a time change.

The hospital called two weeks before to make sure that I filled out all of the paperwork. One of them was a sleep diary and the other was a questionnaire about my sleeping habits. Well, yes, when I was younger I walked in my sleep quite a bit. I still sleep with my eyes open sometimes which is unnerving to people who walk in on me. I do talk in my sleep. My daughter loved to wait until I fell asleep and then try to talk to me to see what crazy things I would say. They told me to contact Jennifer and ask for some Ambien to have in case I needed it to sleep there. She was horrified. People do crazy things in their sleep on that stuff. I know. My sister was on it. She used to sleep cook.

One morning she woke up with milk all down the front of her nightgown. She went into the kitchen and found cereal poured on the kitchen counter and peanut butter toast on top of the toaster. Ophelia got up and told her the story of how she woke her up in the middle of the night. There was a thud in the hallway. Ophelia came out of her room to find my sister on the floor. Concerned, she asked if she was ok. My sister’s response, Yes. I just tipped over. We all had a good laugh about it. The sleepwalking scene in the movie Step Brothers always made us laugh and reminisce about the time my sister did that.

So Jennifer reluctantly gave me a prescription for six Ambien. The weekend before my sleep study, she wanted me to take a half pill Friday night. If I did ok with that, she wanted me to take a whole one Saturday night, just to make sure I would not have any adverse reaction during the test. I took them as instructed. To be perfectly honest, I had a horrible vision of waking up on the kitchen floor with a knife in my hand and my guts on the floor. I was terrified I would, in my sleep, decide to try to find out what was inside me causing all this trouble. But it went off without a hitch. In fact, I slept really well! I didn’t even feel at all groggy in the morning, which is what I feel when I take Nyquil.

I had my sleep study the night before my allergy test. I forgot the stupid Ambien in the car. They asked if I wanted to go get it. It was clear back around the building and up the parking ramp. Nah, I don’t need it. It was a restless sleep. It is hard to sleep in a strange bed knowing people

Reviews for Endopocalypse

[nordica · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved it! I suffer trom Endometriosis too and it felt so real that I could almost see myself in it! The author is amazing in describing everday life with this chronic disease that despite your efforts controls your life...She was able to give a realistic description being serious and hilarious at the same time: I highly recommend it!