(Fair warning: This will be an exceptionally nerdy blog post because I really. really love Star Wars.)

So Saturday was the two-year anniversary of me being diagnosed with endometriosis - my endo-versary, if you will. But my mind wasn't really on it or even on what it should have been, which was the fact I'd be seeing Rogue One in mere hours.

Instead, feelings of sheer hopelessness and inadequacy decided to pile up that day.

My husband, Andrew and I drove that afternoon to a local humane society, hoping to adopt a sister or brother for our dog, Juno. I have a bleeding heart for animals and will literally take any homeless animal that crosses my path, Andrew, on the other hand, is much more rational, assessing whether the dog will thrive despite our lack of fenced-in yard, whether he or she will get too big for our rental home, etc.

So of course, this episode led to me falling in love with a yellow lab, only to have Andrew gently (and, admittedly, correctly) tell me she wasn't a good fit for our home. In fact, none of the dogs at the shelter that day were a good fit for Juno or our small house.

I guess my heart couldn't take another "no" because when we got to the car, I silently held back tears and drove us home. Once in our living room, I curled up on the couch with Juno and cried to Andrew, trying to explain my overflowing emotions that may or may not be directly related to my IUD - WHO KNOWS IT'S A MYSTERY.

Ever since my surgery, my life has felt like a long series of "no"s or "not good enough." My best efforts to support my health, benefit myself or even contribute to my community felt like a drop in the bucket. Like I was throwing effort, energy, time and money to the wind, only to have it come back that I wasn't making a difference. 

Whether it was a lonely dog I wanted to give a home for Christmas, or money donated to a cause I care about, or a new treatment that I expected to alleviate my endometriosis pain, my best intentions were continually met with "no."

And I consider myself fairly patient, but when I can't make any headway at all, I tend to take it personally.

I managed to get my tears together in time to grab dinner with our friend who came with us to Rogue One. If one thing can briefly take my mind off my frustration, it's Star Wars. I've been pretty much obsessed with these movies since I was six years old, so as someone who has waited 20 years to see women as THE Star Wars hero, this is a great time in my life.

So let me start this section off by saying it is REALLYYYY difficult for me not to completely lose my shit over how good Rogue One was and ruin it for you, but I will try my damned hardest.

Without giving away the movie's glorious plot, I will summarize it as this. The main characters give so much to a cause and have no idea how much their actions will impact the grand scheme of everything that happens in Episodes IV-VI. They run at it headfirst because they believe in the cause, but there's honestly no expectation that they will succeed or that it will make difference. But they do it anyway because they care and hope so. much.

And when that realization hit me in the last 15-ish minutes of the film, I literally started sobbing. Hard. In the middle of the movie theater. While my husband laughed and held my hand.

I continued to cry through the end of the movie and intermittently until we got to the car.

My epiphanies tend to happen at unlikely moments and right when I need them. At that time, Rogue One was exactly what I needed to hear.

I understood the sensation of foolhardy hope and the overwhelming, consuming need to do something, to not just sit there idly and let things happen. It's why I made this blog to  begin with. It's why I spend an entire day carting my husband around to gather things for a cause I need to help RIGHT NOW, NO NOT LATER, NOW.

And while I feel that talking about my uterus, arguing with my doctors and begging strangers to take control of their health aren't even blips on the radar of history, they are.

I may not live to see a cure for my disease, but I hope and believe there's one out there. I at least know there are better treatments out there.

I may not live to see the causes I'm devoted to resolve themselves or end happily. But my effort does amount to something.

One of my favorite lines from the film, which will not spoil Rogue One for you, is "Do you think anyone is listening?" I love that because it's something I say to myself so frequently, especially after I launch off an embarrassingly emotional blog post or leave a crabby voicemail at my doctor's office. Or in other words, "I've done my part. Now, what will people do with it?"

No matter how much it hurts or exhausts me, I'll continue doing my part for endometriosis advocacy. And I'll push myself to do more. Because I know I couldn't live with myself if I did nothing.

If you're feeling like me about something in your life, I encourage you to keep doing what you're doing and never let the fear of ineffectiveness wear you out. As pessimistic as I've been about the world over the past few months (or year?), I do sincerely believe things come together the way they should when good people work hard toward an end. 

I believe in a better future for our world. And we're the force to see it through.

Approximately three weeks after my surgery, I emerged the cave that is my home, shriveled in the sunlight and trudged to the gym. I was anxious to get back, and not only because my in-laws gave me a sweet early Christmas present: bright pink running shoes. I could feel my back and shoulders aching the way they do when I'm inactive. And I was feeling pain up and down my legs that I thought some cardio would fix.

So when I finally scanned my neglected gym membership card and hopped on to the elliptical, I felt empowered. I basked in the joy of overcoming a sliver of my illness. I managed to run two-and-a-half miles (slower and with less resistance than I usually do), and I came home with a renewed sense of strength.

In my surgery, I got a Mirena IUD placed. Given the mixed reviews women have with IUDs, I was really worried that my body would immediately reject it. (I've heard some horror stories...) But for those three weeks, my uterus cooperated, to my relief. And being able to manage the gym was a sure sign to me that my IUD was here to stay.

...and then two days later, I spent an entire day trying not to throw up.

I had already lost six pounds since my surgery (uh what?), so I was concerned with this nausea that seized my entire body for 24 hours. I could hardly concentrate on work, and any time I sat upright, waves of sickness would overcome me. I spent that afternoon sort of leaning on the couch so that I could still work and not vomit all over my laptop.

After work, my husband, Andrew and I went to check out a rental home we were considering moving into. As I was scanning the living room, my body said, "No, seriously. You're going to puke." 

I immediately walked away and pretended to be super interested in the yard that I had already looked at. There was no way I was going to throw up in this poor woman's house. Andrew came out to check on me, knowing I was sick, and I asked him to apologize to the landlord for me. I thankfully never did throw up...

On the way home, we stopped less than a mile from our home so that I could spit into the grass a few times.  And as soon as we walked through the door, I flopped down on the bed with a mop bucket next to me and took a nap. I woke up at 7:30 p.m., tried to eat something and immediately realized that wasn't going to work out. So I went back to bed at 8:30 p.m. and gave up on the day.

"What was that?" I wondered the next day. "Is this just a thing that's going to happen from now on? Or did I catch a 24-hour flu? Just, what is this?"

That sort of nausea, plus the new breakout of acne on top of my already scarred cheeks, wasn't something I wanted to deal with. While an IUD would potentially stave off endometriosis growth and keep me from having to worry about birth control pills, these were very inconvenient side effects...

I messaged a few endo sisters, asking for input. They sympathized, each having their own tales of IUD woes. Of course, it was still a little early to tell whether or not these symptoms were directly related to my IUD. But I had a pretty good feeling they were...

Here's the ironic thing I've noticed about IUDs. All of the women I know who have them and don't have serious reproductive issues LOVE THEM. They were the ones who were most vocal in supporting my decision to get one.

But my friends with endometriosis? "Yeah, go for it, if you want."

That should have tipped me off that having an IUD might not be smooth sailing. Of course one of the limited treatment options for endometriosis would offer a slew of side effects to the women it's supposed to help!

Again, it's still early to see whether or not my IUD will be more trouble than it's worth. But I've unfortunately had quite a few endo sisters get theirs removed after a few months. Which, knowing that most women didn't have the luxury of being unconscious during insertion like I did, really, really sucks.

I'm keeping an eye on my side effects, harassing my dermatologist about my breakouts and crossing my fingers that everything will balance out. I'm hoping some of this weight I've lost comes back, but I've noticed my IBS-like symptoms have crept back since my surgery, too. (That I think is just a consequence of surgery.)

Anyway, if any of this sounds like your IUD experience, please let me know. And if you're thinking about getting an IUD, please don't let my experience put you off! Every woman is different, and it might work perfectly for you! You never know until you try.

It's a little early to be thinking about 2017. But maybe because I'm so anxious for the disaster that is 2016 to be over, I've already started planning parts of next year.

Instead of a New Year's resolution, like many people make and often break, I create mantras for my year.

It's an idea I picked up in therapy for depression and anxiety a few years ago. When faced with a panic-inducing situation, my therapist recommended repeating a mantra to help me work through it.

Her suggestion was something like "This, too, shall pass." Mine ended up being "Will I die from this? No, I won't."

(It was a difficult year, okay?)

Likewise, I've crafted a few mantras over the years to help me set a tone or mindset for the new year, rather than a list of things I'd like to accomplish that I'll forget about and never do.

My junior year of college, my mantra was "Shameless," as in, "I'm going to do things without regard to what people think of me."

For 2016, it was "I will wear what I want." Pretty self-explanatory. The above picture is one of the products of that mantra.

This upcoming year, my mantra is "I'm not afraid of you." And I've already started to apply it.

When facing my second endometriosis surgery two weeks ago, I couldn't deny that I was scared. Not so much for the surgery itself, although anesthesia always freaks me out, but because I didn't know what it would hold for me.

Looking back, my first surgery was a cluster. By that, I mean I had a doctor so hellbent on proving that I didn't have endometriosis that I don't believe I received the care that I needed. I know I can't really say that he for sure didn't get everything out in my surgery that he could have. But it's a feeling both me and my husband, Andrew have had.

This time around, I found that my endometriosis has migrated to another organ, my bladder. And that was frustrating to hear but, ultimately, inevitable.

I was hesitant to even have this surgery done because, honestly, I was scared. I feared the IUD and pelvic floor injections that would be added to cutting and burning off endometriosis sites. I was afraid of a longer recovery and complications. I had it in my mind that my body would hate my IUD and that I'd be one of the horror stories in women's health magazines that read "WOMAN'S UTERUS TWISTS AROUND IUD AND NOW SHE IS JUST A HEAD SOMEHOW."

But for most of these scary things that I confront with my illness, I won't know if it will help me until I get over my fear of more pain and more problems and just try.

The same goes for my fear of offending or annoying my doctors. For the most part, I got over that fear pretty damn quick. Having a bad doctor and a delayed diagnosis will make you appreciate self-advocacy a lot more... 

But I still fear upsetting my physicians and other medical professionals with my insistence and stubbornness. I dread getting frustrated and tired over playing phone tag and begging for prior authorizations. I'm afraid of alienating people who are trying to help me when I say "no" to certain treatments or ask probing questions.

But why? Honestly, why? What can I expect from doing nothing at all, besides more nothing?

If I can be candid, the past few months of my life have been consumed with fear and anger. These feelings turned to numbness when election results rolled in the night before my surgery. 

Deep down, I am still afraid. I'm afraid for my health care and any changes that could affect treatment for my chronic illness. I fear for my friends who have bigger fears, and I fear for how things around me will change. 

But most of all, I fear that I can't do anything about it.

And that's the purpose of my mantra: to force me to act in spite of my fear. Maybe a truer mantra would be "Okay, I really am afraid of you, but I can't just stand here paralyzed, so I'm going to do something about it." But that doesn't fit neatly at the top of my day planner...

I still think I have plenty of reasonable fears. Like "I don't want to go out tonight because I hurt, and I'm afraid of hurting further." Or "I don't want to drive three hours by myself because I'm afraid I'll fall asleep."

But I'm learning to categorize some of these thoughts as "danger." "I'm in danger of hurting myself further from this action because it's happened before, like, every single time" as opposed to "I'm afraid of hurting more down the road from a treatment I haven't tried yet that I know can be successful."

There have always been times I've feared how people will view me. I've feared losing friends or saying the wrong thing. I've feared feeling things I didn't want to feel or looking like an idiot. I've feared additional diagnoses and being told "Well, this is all we can do for you." But I'm turning all of my fears into action, advocacy and activism, as best as I possibly can.

This week, Andrew and I booked a summer vacation. I'm taking advantage of the able body I currently have and pushing aside my fears of wearing myself out or ending up in pain while hiking through national parks. I know that Future Tracy will thank me for casting aside these fears and allowing myself freedom beyond my body.

And soon, I will return to the gym for the first time since my surgery. I won't allow myself to be afraid to see how far I have to go in my recovery. Or afraid of how frustrated I'll be to see how much progress I lost. Or afraid of setting the elliptical to a lower speed and accepting that I have to start over.

This is a conversation I will have to have with myself every day for the rest of my life, probably. But for now, I will move forward, even if it's a slow crawl at the start.

This week, I had the unique pleasure of having surgery the day after Election Day. (I will reserve my comments on that for a later blog post.)

If you've followed my journey for a while, you'll know my first surgery (the one that diagnosed me) was done by a different doctor. I'm no longer with him because, in short, he wanted to prove I didn't have endometriosis, didn't give me any medication after my follow-up appointment and just told me to get pregnant. NEAT.

My current ob-gyn, despite being chronically unavailable, is pretty great. She's always willing to work with me to find a treatment I'm comfortable being on, and most of all, she gets endometriosis. So when her nurse called me the day before to tell me I was in good hands, I sincerely believed it and still do.

My husband, Andrew and I showed up at the hospital after driving around looking for Door 5 forever. I promise my hospital isn't as sketch as this picture looks, but Andrew and I were both wondering if it meant I'd wake up years later from a coma during the zombie apocalypse... And I was kind of cool with it, given the election results.

I was due for surgery at 10:45 a.m., but as it approached noon, I still hadn't been moved. The longer I waited, the more tired and sore I became. I hadn't been allowed to take any painkillers for the two weeks prior to my surgery, and I desperately wanted a heating pad... or anesthesia. I'd take that, too.

I twisted in my bed, trying to get comfortable, and fell asleep at least twice before my ob-gyn and anesthesiologist showed up to talk about usual pre-surgery things. "We're going to cut you open..." Yep. "...and get rid of what we find..." Yeah. "...and it'll be great times." Totally.

An attendant finally showed up to roll me away, and I kissed Andrew goodbye. As opposed to my first surgery, I was pretty chill about this one, but my heart always sinks before major medical procedures. It's almost like another part of me is being chipped away and given to a disease I can't cure and didn't ask for. So as I tried to crack jokes and smile at my husband, I choked up a little bit, just simply overwhelmed by the heaviness that is endometriosis.

My operating room was absolutely freezing, as they tend to be, and my team of doctors buzzed around the room. They got me situated on the table and made sure I had plenty of warm blankets, which is seriously the best part of being at a hospital, besides the socks.

Then came the mask. "This is just pure oxygen," my anesthesiologist said. I immediately became dizzy as the anxiety hit me.

"Oh, you must be nervous!" a surgeon said. "Your heart rate just jumped."
"Uhh yep!"

My anesthesiologist soothingly told me to think of a nice dream to have, even though I never dream under anesthesia. (Do people do that?) I took deep breaths of oxygen, trying to calm myself down as three women stared down at me.

Then one of them took my hand, and it was honestly the most important thing that happened to me that day. After remaining nearly speechless for 24 hours, numbed by a presidential election and my impending surgery, I wanted to cry as this complete stranger held my hand and anesthesia flooded my veins.

I fell asleep holding her hand and woke up in an instant, hours later.

Post-surgery with apple juice

Just like my last surgery, I woke up on my left side. My teeth were chattering from the anesthesia and my pain was pretty... uhh... painful.

"On a scale of 1 to 10..."
Oh, here we go.
"...how bad is your pain?"

Unable to talk from the tube that had been down my throat, I held up seven fingers. Seven is usually a safe bet.

But as my nurses talked among themselves, my pain escalated, and I hoarsely asked to be shifted to my back. That didn't help. I held up eight fingers.

"Okay, well, your doctor didn't order you pain meds, so..."

...excuse me, what?

You cut into my uterus, burned off stuff and... didn't order me pain meds?!?!

The nurses quickly called my doctor as I stared at the ceiling, wondering why the hell I didn't have morphine. I thanked them as they spoon-fed me ice chips and did  That situation was remedied in a few minutes, luckily, and I focused on taking deep breaths to fully come out of anesthesia. I was having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open this time, but instead of sleeping, I desperately wanted to know what happened in my surgery.

I was soon wheeled into recovery to talk to Andrew about what my ob-gyn said and to watch Arthur:

My fave

As I slowly sipped some apple juice, Andrew retold what my doctor said and showed me pictures of my uterus (which I'll spare you).

"It was everywhere."
What does that mean?
"I don't know. She said they moved something, and it was everywhere. You see those black dots?"
Yeah.
"That's what they burned off."
Oh, yeah. That is everywhere.
"They found some on your bladder..."
Oh, great.
"...but you don't have interstitial cystitis. "
I TOLD them I didn't have it! I TOLD THEM.
"But they said everything looked great. They did the injections, and you have an IUD."
So that's it?
"That's pretty much it."

So that's all I really know right now about my surgery. Apparently, my doctor did come talk to me, but I was completely out of it and don't remember... I guess they have to do that, even if you're not aware of the world around you.

I don't really know what this means for my endometriosis, as far as staging does, but I'm not sure a label matters. My endo has officially migrated to another organ, which sucks, but I'm hoping my Mirena IUD does what it allegedly can do and slows it own.

Stages, for those who don't know, don't really mean much as far as symptoms go. You can have stage I endometriosis and experience crippling pain. And you can have stage IV and experience no symptoms at all.

I was diagnosed with "minimal endometriosis," but in just two years, things have progressed pretty significantly from what I can tell right now. I'll know more during my post-op in late December, but I do know that it took longer to recover from this surgery than my first, making me think they did a lot more work. (I also had an IUD, injections and am fighting an infection I had beforehand, so there's that...)

I haven't had much time to absorb my surgery. My emotions have been focused on the election results, and they haven't strayed. But I think I'll have more feelings about it, when I take the time to let them come.

For now, I'm focused on my recovery, which is almost over. I should be okay to drive tomorrow, and I left my house yesterday for the first time.

I'm ready to face the next chapter of my endometriosis journey.

I was going to wait a few days to write this, but I can't get it out of my head, so I guess I'll write everything out right now.

So basically, if you're not interested in reading this entire post, I'm going in for my second surgery on Nov. 9 - just a month shy of two years since my first one.

And I... I'm feeling utterly, hopelessly and devastatingly defeated.

This feeling actually started a few weeks ago on a Tuesday morning. I'd spent the night prior wrapped up in my heating pad and drifting in and out of sleep on the couch. It was that kind of hazy, confused sleep in which you keep trying to wake up, but you're pulled deeper and deeper into chaotic dreams that don't make sense. And you finally shoot awake like you're surfacing for air before drowning.

Or maybe I'm the only one who sleeps like that...

Anyway, I woke up the next morning surprisingly refreshed. I wasn't in the sickening, dragging pain that I had the day before, so I got ready for the day, made breakfast and started skimming my work emails.

Within an hour, my vision started to go blurry. My ears rang louder and louder. A cold sweat broke over my entire body. What the hell? Am I passing out?

I managed to type out an instant message to my boss through bleary eyes. "I'm passing out. I have to take the day off. I'm fine, probably. Okay, thanks bye!" And I also composed an out-of-office message. And people think chronic illness patients can't do anything...

I collapsed onto my bed and felt a wave of nausea, pain and heat that I hadn't really felt since before I was diagnosed with endometriosis. As my brain continued to wail "What the heeeeelllll???" I fell asleep until 1 p.m. and then woke up to text my very worried boss that I was actually alive.

I hadn't passed out because of my uterus in a long, long time. And it definitely had never happened during work hours. So of course, I was embarrassed. I take pride in not letting my disease affect my work. But whatever happened clearly couldn't have been prevented.

So I called my ever-elusive ob-gyn's office and pleaded for an earlier appointment than the one we have scheduled for uhh... January. They fit me in, and I just had to hang on and hopefully not pass out until then.

My appointment was last week Friday, and I decided to take the afternoon off. I had pulled extra hours at an early morning Saturday event and a Monday conference, and I was just ready for the week to be over. There was also that foreboding feeling that my ob-gyn wouldn't have exciting news, so I figured I wouldn't be able to reply to work emails with an answer other than "I DON'T CARE. MY UTERUS IS ON FIRE. GREAT, THANKS. - TRACY"

But the thing was I actually felt okay that day. After my fainting episode and a rough few days following, my body seemed to get over whatever the hell was bothering it. My energy miraculously came back. My pain levels were low. I think I even told my physical therapist I was at a three on the pain scale when I went to see her.

But as I sat in my ob-gyn's office and swung my feet back and forth for a half hour, I knew that I couldn't count on that. I can never count on that. In fact, right before my first surgery - the one that would diagnosis me with endometriosis - I remember going, "I've felt fine this whole week. Why am I asking for this surgery?" And then I found out why I demanded it in the first place...

My doctor finally came in, and as usual, any frustration I had toward her for neeeever being available vanished. I mean, this woman is fantastic. She's smart, sympathetic and amiable, and dammit, I can't stay mad at a doctor who knows her shit.

I detailed my symptoms, mostly focusing on the month and a half of non-stop fatigue and pain. She checked me over to confirm that, YEP, Tracy hurts a whole hell of a lot and then furrowed her brow.

"When was your last surgery?"
December 2014.
"Do you think it's time to go back in and clean things up?"
Sure, why not? Sounds fun.

Okay, I wasn't that eager to have a camera stuck in my bellybutton. I asked a few questions about my options, and she said what I thought she would. "Well, there's only so much medicine I can give you before we have to go back in and get rid of what's there."

As much as I thought I'd have to get another surgery in two years, I was really, really, reallyyy hoping I could push it off a little longer.  After a fun-filled two months of trying to figure out my fatigue (and, by the way, my prior auth on that medication still has not come through yaaay) I wasn't quite thrilled to have to also deal with a laparoscopy and the recovery.

But this time, this ain't your mama's laparoscopy. After my doctor cuts and burns off the visible endometrioma, we're going to check out my bladder because DAMMIT people just won't believe I don't have interstitial cystitis! And then, we're injecting some shit into my pelvic floor muscles so that they calm the eff down! And then, we'll probably throw in an IUD while we're at it because, hey, I don't want to deal with all those painful "awake" procedures if I can do them while I'm dead to the world.

(Can I just say that I love that my surgery is the day after Election Day? If it doesn't go the way I want, at least I'll be unconscious for a good few hours of the following four years...)

To be honest, getting all of that done at once terrifies me. I mean, my mom recently endured a surgery in which they literally took out her organs and put them back in, but I still fear pushing my body beyond its limits. I already had concerns about recovery from a surgery's second time around, but all of this at once seemed so overwhelming.

My doctor sent me on my way to scheduling, and I figured it'd be a few months until they could get me in. But when I heard "Can you make November 9th work?" my eyes got wide. This was all happening really fast. I just went from absolutely never getting to see my doctor to "Hey, let's cut you open in less than two weeks." I scribbled down the info in my planner, stuttered a thank you and went to sit on a bench for check out.

As I texted my husband and my mom to tell them the news, I listened to the sounds of nurses cooing over newborns that were being paraded past me. I politely smiled at the proud mothers and then gnawed on my lip as I thought about my surgery.

Another movement caught my attention, and I lifted my head to see a woman my age walk past with ultrasound pictures in her hands. She had the glowing sheepishness of every soon-to-be mom and breezily followed a nurse down the hall.

And that's when I broke.

I've never felt the compulsion to be a mom. My maternal instincts begin and end at fuzzy animals. But the procession of women with functioning uteri just gutted me. Here I was, 26 years old and about to go through another surgery that would simultaneously heal and harm my body, further reducing my ability to conceive, further building scar tissue for my nerves to coexist with.

I don't really remember checking out. I remember getting to my car and crying.

It's moments like these when I feel stupid for feeling sorry for myself and when I also want everyone to stop giving a shit about whatever they care about and feel badly for me. I spent the rest of the afternoon in a pattern of bawling, then suddenly becoming chipper again, then sobbing into my husband's shoulder, then making a joke about something irrelevant, and then letting my dog lick tears off of my face.

This mild manic-depressive episode was fairly fleeting, as I had my band's Halloween show to worry about. I broke my surgery news to the guys at practice the next day, and I have to thank them for dealing with my bizarre health issues and the fact that I sometimes suddenly discuss IUDs after concerts.

With a very successful show and an offer to play someone's wedding ("YOU WANT TO PAY US?!"), I didn't have much time to cry over my busted organs again. But in a silent afternoon today, I mulled over what lay ahead of me.

I always remind myself to be thankful for difficult medical procedures, and honestly, I am. I have great health insurance. I live in a country where I can get this surgery. But the other half of me is angry that I have to endure it in the first place. Furious that my best treatment is surgery after surgery until I die some day or something.

Just how long will I be able to go before my next one? Another two years? Less? 

Just how much damage will they find when they cut me open?

Just how much more will I have to sacrifice and suffer for something I didn't ask for?

With my surgery coming up much faster than I anticipated, I'm trying my best to stay positive. My goal is to be as physically active as possible over the next week and a half, so that I don't bitch and whine from my couch about how "lazy" and "fat" I'm being throughout recovery. (This is a personal problem I'm still trying to work out...) 

Honestly, I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I want them to see the hurdles and complete roadblocks to effective health care for women and feel angry for me. I want them to help me work toward a day when surgery isn't the "best treatment" for an incurable disease that affects 1 in 10 women - one that so many don't even feel comfortable talking about.

My righteous anger will subside. I recovered quickly from my last surgery and will likely breeze through this one.

But for now, I want to feel the suffocating injustice that I've tried to be chill about lately. I want to be sad and frustrated and defeated and whatever I need to feel.

Because if I don't feel it now, I'll feel it later. And I need that time to overcome.

Bright morning lights
Wipe the sleep from another day's eye
Turn away from the wall
And there's Nothing at all
Being naked and afraid
In the open space of my bed
- "Another Time, Another Place" - U2

So last month was really tough. In addition to some above-normal pain, I spent a lot of September in a kind of fuzzy, not-really-aware zone in which I have to do things to double-check that I'm actually awake. 

It's like Inception.

I need one of these.

Actual footage of my tantrum

As you may know, that ongoing sleepiness led me to finally seek help from a specialist. I endured a miserable sleep study at the end of August, and two weeks later, I got some vague test results that essentially said, "Yeah, you're sleepy, but we're not really sure why..."

I wouldn't get detailed results for a few more weeks in my follow-up appointment with my doctor. So in the meantime, I struggled through days in which I fell asleep sitting up at my laptop, jerked myself awake from spontaneous naps after work and in which my dog totally gave up on me waking up with my first alarm.

If your dog doesn't even have faith in you, I mean, who does, man?

I was starting to get impatient. It was clear to me that I was tired because my body was in pain, and my body was in pain because I was tired. There! I diagnosed myself again; now, please give me a treatment plan thx.

I should be eating dinner or taking care of chores or doing a myriad of other things, but I'm really pissed off, so I can't go on with my life until I write it all down right here.

So unless you've managed to escape every discussion about the election, you've probably heard candidates' health come into question on both sides of the aisle. And before I get into this, I'm going to try to stay as non-partisan as possible, and no, I'm not telling you who I'm voting for. Because that distracts from what really bothered me about the past few weeks of political news. 

And also, I don't know if either candidate has a serious illness or disability, and I frankly don't care. Which is kind of the point of this blog post.

As I skimmed through the news and tweets on candidates' health, something really killed me about the language being used to discuss this issue. Something about the way both journalists and your average internet troll questioned the ability of someone to manage themselves with an illness. Something about the way someone said to me, and I quote, "I don't want a diseased retard running this country to the ground."

In short, it's ableism.

If you're reading this, and you, like me, have endometriosis, I'm sure you've experienced ableism in one way or another. 

"Should you really be lifting that heavy box?" 

"Hi, Tracy's husband. How is Tracy's health, even though Tracy is right here?

"Maybe you should take a break."

"It must be really nice to take an hour from work to go to the doctor every week."

"You shouldn't be doing that if you're sick."

"You know what, you actually don't look sick to me."

The list goes on... and if you have a disability, it goes on even longer.

What it boils down to is an assumption that you understand an ill or disabled person's ability better than they do. And in that assumption is usually the belief that an illness or disability automatically limits you.

And when that's put on blast at a national scale, it's a very revealing insight to how our society views people with disabilities or illnesses. When words like "incapable," "inept" and "incompetent" are thrown around next to diagnoses from armchair physicians, what does that tell people with health challenges? What does that say to our professors, employers and coworkers who work with us? What signals does that send to people who see the man in the wheelchair, the child with a prosthetic or the woman with an "invisible" illness and don't stop to actually know them?

We spend our whole lives fighting to be treated like anyone else. And now, of all things, the election is setting us back.

This afternoon, I was talking with an endo sister about how I've recently felt that I've been skating by on sheer luck. That I've been able to recover and press on through my illness, and that my education or work have never suffered because of a disease I've carried for 15+ years. But that it's all luck, and eventually, it'll all catch up to me.

But it's not luck. It's resilience.

If there's one thing I've learned by connecting with and talking to people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, it's that they're the most resilient people I've ever met. They're the hardest workers, not only because they "have" to be, but because they want to be. They're the most compassionate and understanding people. They're the first to offer to help. They're problem-solvers, negotiators, ambassadors and forecasters. They're unbelievably patient, see all sides of the issue and, above all, they bounce back faster than anyone from the lowest possible points.

If I were picking a president, I would want a chronically ill person.

There are some who wring their hands and pull their hair and screech, "But I don't want a sick person who could die in office!"

First of all, anyone could die at any point in time ever, so that's a really nonsensical argument. Having an illness or disability doesn't necessarily make you more likely to die than an able-bodied person.

But secondly, chronically ill and disabled people understand their abilities better than anybody. If there were something I could not do, I would be the first person to admit it, and I'm sure others with endometriosis feel the same. If I couldn't do my job, I would know it before you did. I trust that others know their bodies, too. (And it's my sincere belief that if someone can handle a campaign trail, they sure as hell can handle a political office. But I digress.)

Yes, there are low points. And yes, I have days when I can't function as well as I'd like. And there are times I have to tap out and take care of myself. (Why is that a bad thing, again?) 

But I've never, ever let that affect my work or education. And I've never given myself excuses. And I've never left a job incomplete. But on a day when one of those critical armchair physicians was in bed with the sniffles, I was managing a couple hundred people at a work event with a heat wrap for pain, a Tramadol and healthy dose of resilience.

It's not up to you, a person on the sidelines, to decide for people with physical limitations what they're capable of doing. You don't deserve a list of their accomplishments or failures, just because a doctor stuck a label on their body. And no one owes you an explanation for every ache, pain or symptom that their illness produces.

Did your employer ask for your medical records when you got your job?

That's what worries me, though. I worry that the more we fuel stuff like this, the more that a person's health will take a spotlight. What if we start pushing out people with illnesses and disabilities from their jobs, simply because of a diagnosis? What if we take away their autonomy completely, and not just kind of, like we seem to be doing? What if we choose for that person where they can live, travel, do and enjoy? Why do the able-bodied get to speak for everyone else?

Instead of speculating about a person's health when you're not their doctor, why don't you ask yourself why you view people with disabilities and illnesses as inferior to you? What do you know about my life? What do you know about what I can do or can't do? 

Because I'm sure if you filmed me 24/7 like a presidential candidate, you'll see me in pain. You'll see me stumble. And you'll see me struggle once in a while.

But above all, you'll see me overcome.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have two-and-a-half miles to run.