My Endo and I

I remember the waiting room. I don't remember what the specialist's room looked like. I do remember that I was still sore from the laparoscopy some four weeks later, which surprised me.

I remember staring at the poster in the waiting room. It had a rose wrapped around a word, with thorns sticking out at all angles to represent what life was like for the women affected by it.

The word was 'Endometriosis'.


I remember having my first period. I was a late bloomer, 14 before I started. I didn't have any pain at first, but right from my first one I knew there was something wrong because of the amount of blood I lost. I woke up in a pool of the stuff, and I'd been wearing the thickest kind I could get. I remember my mother chastising me. I remember stuffing my underwear with toilet paper the next night, and the night after that, and the month after that, and every month from them on, to catch the excess.

I remember a year and a half of very heavy but relatively pain-free periods. I guess I had regular period pain. I'd take a paracetamol and that would be it. I don't even remember what that was like now, but I do know I feel stupid for ever complaining about it now.

I remember the day in July 1996 when the pain started. It was a beautiful day, I'd finished my exams and I had a long, hot summer ahead. I was walking down the road when suddenly the pain started. It came from nowhere and pretty soon I was doubled over. I somehow got home and spent the day curled up on the couch. The following month, the same thing happened. From then on, the first day of my period would see me out of commission. By the time I was 19 I was spending three, four days in bed. I couldn't move. The pain was unbearable every month.

I started going to the doctor, trying one thing after another but nothing helped and the pain increased. There was one fleeting moment in January at the turn of the millennium when I considered taking a drastic solution. I am horrified to even remember it now, but pain can make you desperate. I ended up begging my doctor to refer me to a specialist and I went onto a waiting list.

The so-called 'specialist' literally agreed to do a lap to 'shut me up'. He was a fearsome fellow who clearly thought the pain was all in my head, and told me so in no uncertain terms. After the operation, as I came around from the anaesthetic, I just remember hearing the word 'endometriosis' and crying hysterically. It hadn't been in my head after all and I finally had a diagnosis.

In the weeks that followed, the reality began to sink in. It truly hit me waiting in that waiting room, staring at the poster with my label covered in thorns. As though a poster designed for a primary school, various terms connected with the condition were dotted around it. 'Pain', 'Infertility' and 'Hopelessness' were three of the cheerful phrases that greeted me. Very tactful. Hmpf.

I don't remember what the specialist's office looked like, but I remember his voice. I remember staring at my feet while he told me about the condition of my reproductive organs, the fact my womb was stuck to my rectum, the 'complicated cyst' that had twisted and damaged my right tube, the areas of endo they had removed. Finally, the life sentence given to a 20 year old who had met her future husband just four months earlier of infertility.

It's the memory of that day that makes me forever grateful and thankful to have my two girls. I will never, ever stop counting my blessings that I was able to have my children. It's also the memory of that day that keeps my feet on the ground that I might not be so lucky again.

Endometriosis had a huge impact on my life. Even so, it will never become my life.