Hello!

I'm just having a rough time with my chronic pelvic pain. It's mainly on my right side generally near my upper right hip. It's been constant for a while, tends to fade into the background during more balanced hormonal periods and can be more problematic during ovulation or early into my period. It hasn't woken me up at night and does tend to feel better when I lie down or use a hot water bottle. Exercise like bike riding definitely aggravates it.

I've been consulting with Drs for the past year and so far an abdominal u/s, manual pelvic exam, and pap smear have all come back as clear. To provide some background, when I had my son in 2009, I threw out that side of my back about 10 weeks after he was born. I had problems walking for two weeks while that injury healed. I was also a long-term runner (almost made it to 30 years!) when I had to give that up in my early 40's due to pelvic and bladder pain.

It's been kicking up again this month and I'm trying not to fall down any HA holes. I started working with a bodyworker recently who does myofacial release. We've been slowly working on old injuries and this area has been super problematic for me. I had a medical trauma to my urethra as a very young child, (a procedure which was common back in the 60's and 70's but no longer in regular use), and I have a lot of fear tied up in that space.

Just curious to see if anyone else struggles with this? Perimenopause has been really unkind to me. I recently came across some research that showed that women who experienced trauma or had ptsd struggled with more intense perimenopause symptoms. I only found the one study so I don't know how true that might be but it does seem to be in my case.

I'm going to set up an appt with my doctor to ask for a gastro referral so that I can rule out my IBS or anything worse. It's just so weird that I have really deep emotional responses to this pain and discomfort. Just curious to see if anyone else is going through something similar. Thanks for any replies!