Hi everyone.
I believe this is my first post here.
I have been experiencing my symptoms for 2.5 years now.
I was completely healthy. I was 21 years old.
Then, I decided to get a copper IUD for birth control, because taking pills daily was annoying and I didn't want to have to remember. Well, this was the beginning to what I'm going through now.
The insertion of the IUD was painful, and I knew the pain can remain for a couple days. But days went on and on, turned into weeks. Also the one period I had on the copper IUD was absolutely awfully painful.
30 days after the insertion I went back to my gynecologist to check if the IUD is in a correct position, etc. Between the insertion and then, due to pain, I was doing some research as I was kind of worried as to why the pain is not going away. I read that the IUD might get displaced, even fall out, or perforate the uterus. I was afraid that maybe this was what happened to me. But I went to the gynecologist and everything looked perfect on the ultrasound. She didn't know why I still had pain. She gave me some antibiotics "just in case" I had an infection. It didn't help, so I went to get a second opinion.
The second doctor said that the IUD was displaced, and he took it out. The removal was a bit painful, and the IUD came out bent, which made me think that really something might have really been wrong with it. I remember feeling immediate relief when it came out, I don't remember if it was full relief though, I don't think so.
2 weeks later the new doctor inserted a hormonal IUD instead. I did it because I thought the copper IUD was the problem, so now with a hormonal IUD everything will be perfect. Well, the pain still remained. So after another 1.5 months I went back again to get it taken out.
And the pain didn't go away... So I freaked out a bit. Especially because a few days later I had a flight for a trip across the world. I went there for 2 weeks and was pretty miserable the whole time, because I still had pain, I kept thinking I have PID or something, I kept googling. When I came back to my home country, I went to another gynecologist and to my surprise, she said everything was okay... She again gave me some antibiotics "in case" I have an infection. Needless to say, that didn't help either and that's when I broke down completely because I didn't know what to do anymore.
So of course I went down all possible medical rabbit holes, went to probably 20 different doctors, had probably 20 different tests. The pain in the meantime kept just changing, spreading.
I believe I found out about TMS, neuroplasticity, sensitization etc pretty early on - probably less than 6 months into my pain. I tried to apply the techniques, I even had a great deal of hope when using curable. And I quickly got frustrated when it wasn't working, scared again.
I'm trying to apply these methods again now... But I feel like I've been through so much and I keep asking myself "why hasn't anything worked?" when I did have brief periods of time when I was not as depressed about my pain I think...
Currently, my pain is in my pelvis (low abdomen, pudendal nerve especially the left one, but also right, next to my left sitbone, clitoris), sometimes my legs hurt and I feel nerve sensations on them, such as cold, and I also have "weird nerve sensations" allover the left side of my body - in my face, shoulder and arm, leg. The nerve sensations are near constant, I sometimes catch brief moments when I THINK I feel normal... The pudendal sensations are also pretty much constant and get a bit worse with sitting, I also get these sudden stabbing, shooting electrical like pains.
I even have spots in my low abdomen where if I press, I can recreate some of my pelvic pains... That scares me a lot.
It all started with a stupid IUD and I can't forget about this. I'm scared because I haven't had a single day of no pain ever since. I think the pain is pretty much the same everyday, doesn't fluctuate much, and most often I see that people's TMS comes and goes so that's why I'm having doubts and losing hope that this can help me.
My theory is that I got so stressed out over the IUD and worried that it damaged something, that this put my nervous system in high alert mode.
But at the same time I don't understand why I also got NERVE PAIN and that it has not gotten better yet... It's been 2.5 years.
If anyone read my story and can offer some advice, feel free.
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