NOVEMBER 1999: After being on the Depo Provera shot for a while (3 months or so) I moved to Southern California. Once I got to California I started to get a severe pain in my left ovary. I had to find a doctor that could maybe help with the pain and find out what was going on. It was a sharp stabbing pain that made it hard to walk or even ride in the car (I now know that it was an ovarian Cyst. I have come to know the pain very well).
The doctor I found was in Glendale California at the Glendale Adventist Hospital. I think a friend of a friend of the family recommended him for some reason or another. I came in and he listened to my story about my surgery and then the pain that I was having. He flat out told me that he didn't even beleive that Adenomyosis was a possibiblty because I was so young. He began to tell me that he had only seen Adenomyosis in women that had allready had children. Not in women who were so young like me.
The doctor ended up doing a transvaginal ultrasound finding a little fluid on my left ovary. He figured that it was just a cyst that had popped and on it's way to healing. Luckily it wasn't serious! While he was in there he also looked at my uterus and said that it had some discoloration but was a normal size... so I didn't have Adenomyosis (as if you can really tell by a transvaginal ultrasound) I don't know if he expected to find my uterus the size of a watermelon or something, but doctors have told me that since I was so young (20) the disease is probobly in the beginning stages. I walked out of the office very disappointed in the medical profession. And from this point on I even questioned if I had Adenomyosis or not.
I stayed on the Depo Provera shot for about six months and eventually noticed the bad side effects starting to occur. Though my cycle had stopped and the pain was almost gone (yay), I had other things to worry about. After every shot of Depo Prevera I was having hot flashes and feeling light headed. My moods were also getting to be a little more dramatic. Sometimes I felt ok, but then there were other times when I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, or I just wanted to throw and break things (I'm searious about this one.. those glass/mirror doors on the closet were tempting at times). I also noticed a big weight gain of 60 or so pounds that came out of nowhere. I started to really hate my body when I got streach marks on my tummy, breasts and arms from gaining the weight so fast. Battle scars are what I call them these days. To this day the strangest and worst side effect that I have experienced was my breasts going from a 36 C to a 36 DD, and I began to lactate. My body actually thought I was pregnant, so it was producing breast milk. But there was no way that I was pregnant. I was on the Depo Provera shot and hadn't had a period in over half a year. I would later find out that the breast milk would not go away even when I stopped the Depo Provera.
