Hi Gang. I wanted my blog to be about fun topics that interest me like traveling and food. As I struggled to write about new topics, I realized that a big part of my journey I haven’t talked about is my diagnosis and living with Endometriosis. I realized how large of an impact this topic has had on my life and specifically those fun topics I love…travel and food.
When I was 24, I had moved home from college and was working at a family friend’s company while getting my MBA online. While I have a pet peeve of people complaining that they are busy, I can attest that I definitely had my fair share of stress during that time.
The first symptom I can remember having was severe pain in my lower left side of my stomach. It was nothing like I had ever felt before. There wasn’t a slow build of pain increasing over time. One night I woke up with excruciating pain and it continued each night for about a week. Even though a lot of my family is in the medical field, I am guilty of putting off going to the doctor until it is way beyond necessary. Each night, I would pace around the house to distract myself from the pain while my parents slept. Finally I went to my mom and agreed to go to the doctor. It was later at night, so we decided to go to a 24 hour urgent care….in hindsight, not sure why we thought an urgent care would be able to help…but hey! it was a step! They suspected it was probably an issue with my reproductive organs and because they had no scanning equipment there, I was sent home and told to contact my gynecologist.
Now, this might come as a shock to some people, but I had never been to a gynecologist before…even though I was 24 (or maybe not, because ya know…I don’t love going to doctors). I called several practices the next day and picked the doctor with the next available appointment. I think it was 3 days away and it felt like torture!
I think all of us ladies remember the feeling of going to see the “lady doctor” for the first time. “I have to take my pants down?!” “They will stick what where?!” “Will it hurt?” “Am I trimmed enough?” etc. While, I still get some of those thoughts to this day, I think us girls get used to it and it just becomes a necessary part of life.
At my first appointment, I described all of the symptoms I was having and the doctor pressed on my pelvic area and saw that it caused pain. He ordered a ultrasound to be done a couple days later and prescribed me some pain medicine.
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I had both a Pelvic Ultrasound and a Transvaginal Ultrasound performed. A few days after, I was at work when I got a phone call. It was the doctors office asking me to come into the office as soon as I could. Crap. A same day doctors appointment could not be a good sign. I called my mom and luckily she was available to go with me. I left work and headed to his office. I was so worried. I don’t know about you guys, but my brain likes to immediately start thinking the worst in these types of situations.
At my appointment, my doctor told us that I had a 10 cm cyst on one of my ovaries. It was one of the largest cysts he had ever seen and described it as the size of a baseball or an orange. I felt vindicated in that moment. Even though the doctor didn’t dismiss my pain, I think 99 times out of 100, his patients pain is a small cyst or nothing at all. Now I could see in his face that he understood how much pain I was experiencing.
My doctor also suspected that I had something called, “endometriosis”. I had never heard of this before. I don’t know if it was less talked about 8 years ago, or if I just didn’t notice because it was something that didn’t affect me.
According to the Mayo Clinic, Endometriosis is a painful disorder where tissue that lines the inside of the uterus (the endometrium) grows outside the uterus as well. This can include most commonly the fallopian tubes and ovaries. Currently, the only way to officially diagnose someone is through a procedure called a laparoscopy.
Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you look at it, I already needed a laparoscopy in order to remove the dangerously large cyst on my ovary, so while doing that he would be able to look at the cells and determine if I did, in fact, have endometriosis. Spolier alert, I think we all know by now that I did.
After the appointment, I went home and cuddled in bed with my godson who was about 2 at the time and cried. I cried thinking about the ways endometriosis could affect my chance to have babies and a family. While there is no science that predicts who will be affected by infertility and who won’t, I knew more than anything I wanted to be a mother. Even though that hasn’t happened for me yet, I still hold out hope that it will happen when the time comes.
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A week later, the surgery was done and he removed as much as the cyst and endometriosis cells as he could. However, there was so much blood from the cysts that he was not able to remove a smaller one on my opposite ovary. Fun fact! That cyst is still with me today, 8 years later, not growing! *knock on wood*
In the next few months following my surgery, my doctor had me get a Lupron Depot shot once a month for 3 months. This shot puts your body into menopause and has shown to be valuable in stopping the growth of endometriosis cells (at least for that time). Being 24 with hot flashes though…wasn’t ideal.
Every since 2013, I have been able to manage on birth control pills. I feel incredibly lucky for my road to getting diagnosed as I have heard so many horror stories about it taking people 8-10 years on average to FINALLY get answers as to why they are in so much pain. The huge baseball on my ovary really sped up the process!
I also feel incredibly lucky for my day to day living. While I get the occasional twinge, my pelvic pain doesn’t hinder my every day life *knock on wood again*. I know a lot of people are forced to have laparoscopy after laparoscopy because they are in so much pain. My main source of pain is from migraines. Oh! And peeing 4 times a night. It’s awful! lol
While my story may not be exciting, I wanted to put it out into the world because I know reading about other’s stories really helped me when I was scared and just learning what a diagnosis of endometriosis would mean.
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