Sid Branca's Chronic Pain Surgery
Donation protected
Hello, friends. Thank you for taking the time to look at this page, and for caring about my health--it means a great deal to me. This is all super scary and stressful stuff, and knowing I have a community that cares about me is a great comfort.
If you don't know me but are somehow here: wow, thank you! I'm Sid Branca, a media and performance artist, writer, and educator. I'm based in Chicago, I use they/them pronouns, and if you want to make small talk just ask me about the astrological charts of Twin Peaks characters, how meme culture relates to Walter Benjamin, or why I think everyone should try being a clown for a while. I also have had some long-standing painful health mysteries that have become less mysterious and now can be acted upon surgically!
The short version:
I'm getting surgery to mitigate the pain I've been experiencing for years due to adenomyosis. This gofundme is to help with the costs of recovery, as well as some things to help with pain management between now and surgery.
If you want the details, please keep reading. But first, what's a hysterectomy fundraiser without unsettling family portraits with my fake children??? Have some chaotic non-binary energy with a splash doll phobia before we continue on to the heavily condensed narrative of me being in years of physical pain!!
(photos by the incredible Henry Hank )
The long version: (content note: reproductive health / surgery / gross details)
I've been dealing with some reproductive health issues on and off since 2005, when I was still a teenager, including abnormal and intense amounts of bleeding and pelvic pain. (To give a TMI sense of scale, we are talking a mistaken-for-a-miscarriage level of bleeding and pelvic pain.) For quite a few years this was somewhat mitigated by hormonal birth control -- but birth control also made my chronic migraines much worse, both more frequent and more debilitating, as well as negatively affecting my mental health. And by 2014, despite continuing to be on hormonal birth control, I was in frequent and intense pelvic and lower back pain.
At that point I began in earnest a five-year process of getting a diagnosis and a treatment plan. I saw several different doctors, had a bunch of examinations and ultrasounds, tried birth control changes and made some lifestyle adjustments (both of which helped with the migraines but didn't affect the pelvic pain), got tested for several things, and finally in 2019 got a diagnosis of pelvic floor dysfunction (issues with the muscles of the pelvis), and had a pelvic MRI done. I eventually got in with a specialist doctor and chief surgeon at the Center for Comprehensive Gynecology at Northwestern Medicine, and in the summer of 2019 he diagnosed me with adenomyosis.
Adenomyosis is somewhat like endometriosis, but instead of affecting tissues outside the uterus, it means that the muscle walls of the uterus are bleeding. Essentially, the uterine lining is growing from the inside out, through the muscle, and it is really painful. (The pain also isn't constant, and some activities make it feel somewhat better, and some make it feel much worse, and sometimes it's super unpredictable, which also makes it really challenging to gauge how and when I can push myself. I have also gotten really good at ignoring being in pain, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage.)
Since the fall I've been on Orilissa, a relatively new (GnRH) antagonist medication for endometriosis (and the less common adenomyosis) that lowers estrogen levels to mitigate the pain. It's been helping -- however, it has side affects that drastically affect my quality of life, and it is not approved for use beyond two years, because it will drastically damage your bones over time. So it's a stop-gap measure, not a long term solution. I've also been in pelvic floor physical therapy since August, which is helping with the pelvic floor dysfunction initially caused by the adenomyosis, but that can only be so effective without addressing the underlying cause.
So my doctor and I have decided that the best long-term treatment for me for my chronic pain is a total laparoscopic hysterectomy. (The plan is not to remove the ovaries, unless while in surgery it appears to be medically necessary.) This is obviously not a decision I am making lightly, and I strongly believe it is the right choice for me.
My surgery is currently scheduled for late March 2020, with the possibility that I may need to reschedule it for July or August 2020 because of insurance stuff.
I'll have to take time off from freelance work to recover, as well as having increased expenses while recovering, and so this fundraiser is to help me actually take the time to heal and fully recover before I jump back into doing a million things all the time like usual. I of course planned a bunch of expensive things (projects, travel, etc.) before I knew I was going to get surgery in 2020, but waiting another year or something in pain doesn't really feel like an option.
There are also some things between now and surgery I'll use this for: taking Lyfts on days when my pain is bad, getting a roller bag and maybe a cane, a gym membership (because while walking on icy sidewalks makes it much worse, low-impact elliptical machine workouts actually help, bodies are weird), that kind of thing.
If you're looking for non-financial ways to help out, let me know and I'll loop you in. My mother is coming to Chicago to help with the first week of my recovery, and my wonderful partner Nic will be taking the first couple of days off from work, but the second week after surgery I'll probably either be in need of some in-person support, or just be extremely bored and want someone to come over and watch the list of films I've been curating for recovery with me.
Anyway at least now you know that if we were talking and I suddenly made an extremely rude facial expression, or if I said I was going to attend something and I did not, it was probably not related to our friendship, and in fact due to the challenges of having a corporeal form!
Thanks for reading!
love,
sid
If you don't know me but are somehow here: wow, thank you! I'm Sid Branca, a media and performance artist, writer, and educator. I'm based in Chicago, I use they/them pronouns, and if you want to make small talk just ask me about the astrological charts of Twin Peaks characters, how meme culture relates to Walter Benjamin, or why I think everyone should try being a clown for a while. I also have had some long-standing painful health mysteries that have become less mysterious and now can be acted upon surgically!
The short version:
I'm getting surgery to mitigate the pain I've been experiencing for years due to adenomyosis. This gofundme is to help with the costs of recovery, as well as some things to help with pain management between now and surgery.
If you want the details, please keep reading. But first, what's a hysterectomy fundraiser without unsettling family portraits with my fake children??? Have some chaotic non-binary energy with a splash doll phobia before we continue on to the heavily condensed narrative of me being in years of physical pain!!
(photos by the incredible Henry Hank )The long version: (content note: reproductive health / surgery / gross details)
I've been dealing with some reproductive health issues on and off since 2005, when I was still a teenager, including abnormal and intense amounts of bleeding and pelvic pain. (To give a TMI sense of scale, we are talking a mistaken-for-a-miscarriage level of bleeding and pelvic pain.) For quite a few years this was somewhat mitigated by hormonal birth control -- but birth control also made my chronic migraines much worse, both more frequent and more debilitating, as well as negatively affecting my mental health. And by 2014, despite continuing to be on hormonal birth control, I was in frequent and intense pelvic and lower back pain.
At that point I began in earnest a five-year process of getting a diagnosis and a treatment plan. I saw several different doctors, had a bunch of examinations and ultrasounds, tried birth control changes and made some lifestyle adjustments (both of which helped with the migraines but didn't affect the pelvic pain), got tested for several things, and finally in 2019 got a diagnosis of pelvic floor dysfunction (issues with the muscles of the pelvis), and had a pelvic MRI done. I eventually got in with a specialist doctor and chief surgeon at the Center for Comprehensive Gynecology at Northwestern Medicine, and in the summer of 2019 he diagnosed me with adenomyosis.
Adenomyosis is somewhat like endometriosis, but instead of affecting tissues outside the uterus, it means that the muscle walls of the uterus are bleeding. Essentially, the uterine lining is growing from the inside out, through the muscle, and it is really painful. (The pain also isn't constant, and some activities make it feel somewhat better, and some make it feel much worse, and sometimes it's super unpredictable, which also makes it really challenging to gauge how and when I can push myself. I have also gotten really good at ignoring being in pain, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage.)
Since the fall I've been on Orilissa, a relatively new (GnRH) antagonist medication for endometriosis (and the less common adenomyosis) that lowers estrogen levels to mitigate the pain. It's been helping -- however, it has side affects that drastically affect my quality of life, and it is not approved for use beyond two years, because it will drastically damage your bones over time. So it's a stop-gap measure, not a long term solution. I've also been in pelvic floor physical therapy since August, which is helping with the pelvic floor dysfunction initially caused by the adenomyosis, but that can only be so effective without addressing the underlying cause.
So my doctor and I have decided that the best long-term treatment for me for my chronic pain is a total laparoscopic hysterectomy. (The plan is not to remove the ovaries, unless while in surgery it appears to be medically necessary.) This is obviously not a decision I am making lightly, and I strongly believe it is the right choice for me.
My surgery is currently scheduled for late March 2020, with the possibility that I may need to reschedule it for July or August 2020 because of insurance stuff.
I'll have to take time off from freelance work to recover, as well as having increased expenses while recovering, and so this fundraiser is to help me actually take the time to heal and fully recover before I jump back into doing a million things all the time like usual. I of course planned a bunch of expensive things (projects, travel, etc.) before I knew I was going to get surgery in 2020, but waiting another year or something in pain doesn't really feel like an option.
There are also some things between now and surgery I'll use this for: taking Lyfts on days when my pain is bad, getting a roller bag and maybe a cane, a gym membership (because while walking on icy sidewalks makes it much worse, low-impact elliptical machine workouts actually help, bodies are weird), that kind of thing.
If you're looking for non-financial ways to help out, let me know and I'll loop you in. My mother is coming to Chicago to help with the first week of my recovery, and my wonderful partner Nic will be taking the first couple of days off from work, but the second week after surgery I'll probably either be in need of some in-person support, or just be extremely bored and want someone to come over and watch the list of films I've been curating for recovery with me.
Anyway at least now you know that if we were talking and I suddenly made an extremely rude facial expression, or if I said I was going to attend something and I did not, it was probably not related to our friendship, and in fact due to the challenges of having a corporeal form!
Thanks for reading!
love,
sid
Organizer
Sid Branca
Organizer
Chicago, IL