In the beginning

I guess I should start from the beginning. When it comes to getting a period and having a regular cycle, it never happened. I think I got my first period when I was almost 18. Then I would get one or two per year. I went and saw an obgyn in Canada (that's where I'm from...I didn't just randomly decide to go to Canada to see an obgyn) when I was 19 and he did some lab work and then told me not to worry about it. He put me on the pill and that gave me a few regular cycles. Then I went to College and my birth control wasn't covered by my insurance so I stopped taking it. Of course, because of that, I didn't have a regular cycle. At that point I didn't really care because that meant I never had to worry about having a period. I mean how many girls would love to just not have a period every once in a while? I never thought twice about it.

Then I graduated from nursing school and got a job in California. That's when the pain started. I was having migraines all the time, had insomnia and body aches that felt like the flu but worse and it was constant. I had some good days but most of the time I had bad days. I went to several doctors in California who just prescribed me meds...sleeping pills and extra strength ibuprofen and told me to lose weight. I was very overweight (still am, but not as much as back then) but being overweight shouldn't cause you to have such severe body aches. Well, after talking to my aunt about how I was feeling she said that she thought I had the same thing as her...Fibromyalgia. She had been diagnosed with it a few years prior and said that my symptoms were just like hers. So I went and had the pressure point test done and was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Great, just what I need. At that point, there was nothing you could do about it because not much was known about the disease. So it was a matter of trying all kinds of natural remedies, extra zinc, calcium and magnesium, some st-john's wort...shit like that. Never did a thing. Sometimes the pain was so bad I couldn't get out of bed or even go to work. All the doctors I saw in California didn't really believe that it was a "real" disease so never really treated me for it, just kind of poopoo'd it. So now, I had no period and lots of pain and not a decent doctor to be found.

To be continued...