I just peed a little…

I grew up dancing nearly every day and I loved every minute of it.

Except for when I would feel my knees and hips pop and crack painfully with an awkward movement and especially when I would pee myself a little from a jump or leap. I’d have to run off to the bathroom, find a way to clean and conceal it quickly before my classmates or my teachers begin to wonder why I’ve been in the bathroom so long, and then continue.

Sometimes my knees and my hips would hurt so badly that I’d have to sit out of class.

It happened so often yet so irregularly that one day I was fine and the next I was in excruciating pain that kept me from doing the one thing I loved more than anything else at the time — dance. Everyone thought I was lying. My family, the dance teachers, my fellow classmates, the doctors, and physical therapists… or at least that’s how they made me feel. They did scans of my knees and hips and said there was nothing perceivably wrong with me and that it might just be because I was growing.

“Just growing pains, that’s all.”

Another theory was because I was so skinny, I was also weak (yet somehow leaping into full splits and turning 3 times in a row). They said I might need more structural support so I began physical therapy. It didn’t help because that’s not what was wrong with me. I would lay in my bed at night in so much agony that my legs would quiver and eventually I developed a tick that still surfaces today when I get stressed out — I swipe my foot from side to side on my bed in rhythmic motion while laying on my belly, trying to focus all my attention on the way the sheets feel against the top of my foot rather than the pain I felt radiating up and down my legs. This is the same pain that continued to haunt me throughout my life an eventually with my menstrual cycle.

As for the peeing issue, I kept that to myself. I was ashamed of it.

I peed on my friends basement carpet at a sleepover when I was like 9 years old from laughing too hard and I don’t think I ever lived that down. I still remember scrubbing the carpet with dog pee cleaner in pure embarrassment. It doesn’t help that my initials are PP, so kids naturally called me PP Paula. I know that it happens to everyone at some point, but to me — laughing so hard I pee myself a little, happens often. If you make me laugh really hard, I will have to cross my legs and literally hold my vagina, regardless of how recently I peed. My most embarrassing moment in my recent memory is the time I soaked my form fitting, high waisted Levi Jeans when a boy I had a crush on leaned in to kiss me and then picked me up from my lower waist causing just enough pressure to release a good bit of my urine reserves at the most inopportune moment.

If you haven’t already picked up on it — this doesn’t happen because I’m weak or growing.

This happens to me because I have endometriosis which has caused all the muscles in my pelvic floor to tire from decades of strain and pain, rendering the voluntary muscles a normal body uses for continence unable to fully do their job. My endo has also made its way to the inside of my bladder which I will have to continue to live with for the rest of my life because there is no way to remove the lesions from inside this essential organ. There’s a lot more detail that goes into how and why this happens in the body but I’ll save that for another post focused on the Anatomy of Endometriosis.

I saw my Doctors again this past thursday to begin the next phase of my healing process — Bladder Installments, once a week for the next 8 weeks. She began by asking me if I needed to use the restroom, I said no. I had just gone. She then proceeded to insert a catheter into my urinary tract to make sure my bladder was fully empty and low and behold — it was not.

No wonder I’ve always peed like 12 times a day and 4-5 times during the night!

I peed over 200 cc through the catheter. Which is about 6 oz. Which is about 6 shots or the size of an average flask. That is how much urine I was retaining without even knowing it. She kindly told me that I may have set a record and then proceeded to inject the installment (a cocktail of meds designed to help reduce inflammation in my bladder) into the catheter which felt so strange. Basically, like cold pee, moving in the opposite direction than it normally would. It didn’t hurt at all, thank the LORD! Ideally, these installments will calm down the endo that has built up in my bladder and *hopefully* eventually allow me to pee with more freedom and ideally — completely so that I am no longer retaining the majority of the urine in my bladder every time I use the restroom.

It’s officially been about a month since my surgery.

This means that for the past 4 weeks I’ve been fielding different versions of the same question “how are you feeling?” Some people ask out of obligation, some out of true concern and interest — regardless, both are very welcome and appreciated.

Truth? I’m feeling equal parts enlightened and exhausted. It feels incredible to finally connect all the dots of my mysterious allergies, symptoms, and habits to understand their source — a disease I was born with that is not my fault but is my responsibility to treat as I am the owner of this miraculous body I have been given — even when it tests me, fails me, pushes me, and reveals weaknesses to me that ask me to show up with grace and strength. But, I am also a little tired of explaining how I look fine, but I am not fine — and that is OK. While on the inside all my organs in my pelvis are still healing, pooping is still a nightmare, and as I mentioned — I can barely empty my own bladder and I’m still cramping like Aunt Flow could come to town any minute now. On the outside however, I look completely fine. I look radiant, in fact. That’s the word on the street, at least.

“How are you feeling? … Well, you look GREAT!”

I know I LOOK great, that’s why it took me 15 years to find a doctor who actually saw my symptoms as a chronic disease and not just a “women’s’ problem.” And the truth-truth is, behind all the pain, I do feel radiant because I know it’ll only get better from here but I’m still tired, raw, delicate, and deeply in need of copious amounts of me-time. I know I seem like a total extrovert but I’m actually really introverted and that’s where I get my energy — yes, I am an INTJ.

I’ve always known that I need a lot of time to myself in order to recharge but my tendency has been to rarely honor that calling until I totally burn out and need a whole weekend of hibernation to shake it off. Until now. In the past, my natural mode has been to say yes to everything, help out when and where I can, whether I am tired or not, whether it’s worth it for me or not. This simply is no longer an option for me and I am finally learning the true power of no. No, I will not teach that event for free. No, I will not agree to a pay that is below the value of my work. No, I will not overextend myself for the sake of others and at the detriment to me.

Seems like easy things to say no to, right?

Not for me — my childhood conditioned me otherwise. I was trained to say yes, to be easy, to not be so emotional (even though I now know that I couldn’t control that due to all the hormonal issues Endo causes), and to never show my weaknesses to others, which eventually turned into hiding my weaknesses from myself until they became no longer deniable.

Case and point: my 15 year journey to finally and formally have my endometriosis diagnosed and excised.

And this isn’t my fault. Just like it isn’t any other young girls fault when she’s called a drama queen for expressing her pain. That happened to me A LOT. I spent a long time blaming myself for my pain, particularly when it came to difficulties in my relationship with my mother, and trust me — that gets you nowhere. Embracing moments I feel less than radiant, or perceivably “weak” rather than running away from them on the other hand, always helps.

What if knowing my weaknesses are actually the very parts of me that makes me strong?

About 4 weeks passing since my surgery also means I should be getting *close* to a full recovery within the next month which is beyond exciting. I do still feel trapped in my own body in many ways. Jumping, running across the street to catch the last seconds of the pedestrian walk sign, my favorite dance move (the pelvic thrust) — are all still out of the question. But I did go for a swim this week! I told myself I’d take it easy, not push myself, and just let my body and breath synch back up with the water after 4 weeks off. I still timed myself with my apple watch the way I always did and guess what? My times were exactly the same. My distance was exactly the same. I was shocked. I didn’t try. Like, at all. I just listened to my body and let it move me, completely surrendering my ego to the wisdom of my slow and steady strokes.

One of my teachers told me, “the mind loves to play tricks on us, but the body never lies.”

Over the last 4 weeks, my body has shown me that am stronger than my pain patterned mind. She showed me that even though I am still healing, I am just as strong as I have always been. And, every moment of pain that plagued me at least once a month for over 15 years only made me stronger. And above all, it brought all the scattered bits of me, back to me so that I can could even the parts of me that I spent decades shunning and hiding away.