My experience with endometriosis has been one hell of a journey
Endometriosis is where tissue that's similar to the lining of your uterus actually starts to grow outside of it instead
You can get cysts or you can get little patches
and these little patches stick everything together
We're all having this little party with a big spider web in there with my uterus and the bowel and my ovaries
They're all stuck together
For each girl a lot of the time the symptoms can be different
My period started when I was ten
and my pain started somewhere between the ages of ten and fourteen
I honestly don't even know how to explain the pain
It just felt like someone was stabbing me constantly into my lower stomach
The pain feels like a cat is scratching inside your uterus walls
I've broken my shoulder before and that doesn't even compare to the pain of endo
I've only just
realized pretty much now that I'm 25
that I was not having a normal period all these time
It was deemed normal to have a bit of pain so you'd go to
school you couldn't do PE, but no one knew what was wrong. So you kind of just toughed your way through it
I've only got a split second to say to someone I'm gonna faint and then I'm on the floor having a fit
There was a time it happened in hospital and I almost bit off my tongue it was so bad
There's a lot of people who say to me the pains all in your head or just take a panadol you can get over it
You'll be fine. But a panadol does not do shit.
I've had boyfriends that
just didn't understand and said it was all in my head and
That you're really not in that much pain. You're just being dramatic and that killed me
I even had a very close family say to me that if I stopped focusing on the pain
that maybe it would go away
I actually lost my job due to
Going through these kind of symptoms and pain and the reason being was who was going to do my job when I was sick
You have to get surgery and hopefully you don't have to keep having the surgery
I got diagnosed when I was
fifteen or sixteen, roughly around then
I'm now 21 and in that period of time I've had six surgeries
I had surgery and
sadly for me they weren't able to remove all of it.
It won't affect everybody but for me endometriosis has affected my fertility as well
You know, I can't naturally fall pregnant
My gynecologist has pretty much said that he doesn't see me being able to fall pregnant over the age of thirty
Ironically there's a thing called endo belly where we get big flare-ups and we look nine months pregnant
without the baby
The worst part of living with endometriosis apart from all the pain and the bloating would definitely have to be
constantly having to explain to people what the disease is simply because no one really knows what it is
I had no idea what endometriosis was. I didn't even hear the word until early last year
The diagnosis itself was a huge relief. I never felt such a relief that I can finally say
Now I know what's wrong and I can actually tell people that I'm not imagining this
It blows my mind that endometriosis isn't
made that aware in today's society
For people out there I just feel like they need to understand that
you need to be kind supportive and just try and understand
Endometriosis has no cure it's there for life. So you need to learn to live with it
You need to find your support networks
And you just need to hold faith that we will get enough funding that we can find the cure we need research
Into this condition and if we keep this awareness up if we keep talking about it if we get that funding
The young girls growing up now will hopefully have that cure