Living With Endometriosis

Endometriosis, it's that word you may hear, but you just brush it off as a bad period. It is more than that. Let me see if I can try to even give you a glimpse inside of what women are dealing with when they are living with this condition.

I am sitting on my couch in my period stained underwear because it happened again, the unforseen bleeding. I can't wear shorts because they are too tight and I swear they make my cramps worse. Then the cramps start to kick in, I have to jog my mind. Was it something I ate? Was it something I drank? How can I be on hormonal birth control that is supposed to stop my periods? How was it I had surgery less than 2 years ago to get it burned off of where the lining of my uterus is NOT supposed to be? I am sicking here rocking back and forth because nothing takes away the pain and I can't take anything that will mess up my stomach because I already ended up with an ulcer from all the pain medicine. I am only 23 years old and I can't even have a half glass of wine because I will be in the bathroom the next 3 days.

I am only 23 and I can't even do a simple adult thing like have a glass of wine on those bad days.

These past 5 months have been bout after bout of nausea and vomitting like clock work. 2 weeks before my period I am nauseous every day. The week before my period, I am throwing up almost every single day until my period starts. That is a total of 3 weeks out of EVERY SINGLE MONTH that I have to watch what I eat, sex is painful, & I am a monster on the inside. I can manage, but this...this has been rough. Let me give you some back story.

2 years ago I had a laparoscopy that was supposed to help, I bled for about 8 weeks, heavily after the surgery, there was no choice but to put me on Lupron Depot to suppress my hormones and put me in "temporary menopause" Boy, hearing that at 22 is VERY scary. Anyway after that costing $700 each shot with insurance, I couldn't do it anymore so I stopped it. My first two periods were awful and they just brushed it off, than the 3rd cycle, it landed me in the hospital for a loss of blood and excruciating pain, pain worse than I felt when I had a miscarriage. They couldn't brush it off anymore because the er doctor forced them to do something for me. You know what they told me? There is nothing left we can do for you except put you back on hormonal birth control pills. At 23 years old, your telling me there is nothing left to do for me...

Great! So now that we have covered a teeny tiny bit of the physical things, let's talk about the mental things we are experiencing. We have gone through endless doctors appointments, spread our legs and have tons of things shoved up inside of us and sometimes that ends with the doctor telling you things that you thought you WOULD NEVER have to think about at such a young age. Like, endo can cause infertility, and then you have other doctors telling you to hurry and get pregnant to help "fix" the problem. There is no "fix," there is NO CURE! You end up having GI symptoms and all the doctors keep brushing it off with lame ass excuses or saying your crazy, so you go to doctor after doctor, just hoping for the littlest bit of hope that someone will finally listen to you. The days when it all hurts so bad and you just keep bleeding through, you lie there, begging God just to take you because it's just too much.

Now... how did you feel reading all that? Confused, anxious, sad, mad,rushed? All these things we are feeling, EVERY..SINGLE...DAY. And the even crazier thing is, this is just one area of our lives. This is not including the days we miss at work or school, or relationships & sex lives suffering. Endo effects EVERY part of our lives and were told the best they can do is surgery.

Now is it just a painful period?

We endo warriors are strong, resilient, and even when we feeling like just dying, we continue, we continue because if not, nobody will listen to us, we have to come together, we have to demand better answers and solutions!

#endowarrior #endendo