SHARE YOUR STORY – NO.2

The following is a story from a really good friend of mine, she suffered for a long time like most of us before she got her diagnosis!

Its been great for the both of us to be able to bounce ideas off each other in regards to our health. We often discuss personal things like sex, relationships, our no.2’s lol and much more! She has been SO supportive of this whole blog and social media awareness thing im trying to do and its great to have people who understand my journey in my life!

If you have any positive feedback or relate to this story please drop a comment! I’m sure she would love to hear from you 🙂

Happy reading, love and light xxx

I had always had irregular painful heavy periods from the age of 11 and been told by doctors to “just go onto birth control” to control them. For so many years I was on birth control that made me feel gross, unwell and hormonal just to control this stupid thing I didn’t even want to get (I so wish periods didn’t exist) It was when i got to about 17 i noticed things getting a lot worse but kept brushing them off as period pains and what ever else comes with it. Until i was at id have to say one of the most stressful parts of my life.. work was absolutely crazy with huge hours and no breaks resulting in not getting a chance to look after yourself. I don’t know how many times i went through over 10 hours without eating anything and only drinking coffee cause it was quick and easy and suppressed my appetite until i got to sit down and eat. So when i started getting sick i just put it down to work.

And then I started noticing bleeding when i would go the toilet, i left it for a while until it got unthinkably worse.. i was going toilet 9-13 times a day ( number 2) and all i would see was a bowl full of blood. It kept getting brushed off for a while until i changed GPs and she refereed me straight to hospital where i then waited 4 months for a colonoscopy expecting to get answers like you’ve got crohn’s. Instead all the found was hemorrhoids and Irritable bowel syndrome but still didn’t understand why I was bleeding so much.

I sucked that diagnosis up and went through about 2 years of stupid diets, specialist appointments, alternative treatments and never really getting better ( I would hate to think how much money i spent in those two years on treatments etc) In this time i was still seeing my GP and we still couldn’t come up with any ideas, until one day my bowel symptoms were under control and i feel finally showed the maker of all these problems. I was having killer pain that felt like it was up, in and around my down below. I couldn’t explain the feeling but it was horrible. She then threw around the ideas of cysts or endo etc. I was transferred again to the hospital to wait for another specialist appointment.

The first appointment I had was to check for cyst’s, which they did find but it wasn’t the kind of cyst that should be showing those sorts of effects on my body. Thank god my Gp kept pushing cause everyone else was more than happy to run it off as I have cysts on my ovaries. I then saw my next specialist who is the most amazing surgeon you could ever have to deal with endo, within 10 minutes of talking to me about my symptoms etc he was telling me he wanted me to have a surgery to look around and try confirm some things. I had another long wait for this procedure but it was ok cause all I kept thinking was im finally going to get answers! To the point and i know it sounds dumb but if my surgeon didn’t find endo i think i would have been guttered, it’s not something i would wish on my worst enemy but after years of not knowing what was wrong with me i wanted answers! and at that point i didn’t care what they were.

My surgery happened on Christmas Eve, and took much longer then expected. I was in recovery for 2 hours cause I was such a mess in pain after i woke up. They put me in a private room so i had privacy as it wasn’t the best result from the surgery, I had a catheter in me cause he didn’t think I would be able to pee on my own let alone get out of bed for the next day and a half. My surgeon came and saw me the next day and started telling my what he found etc, to then be told he didn’t remove all of it cause he didn’t feel comfortable as it was on my bowels..

I’m now waiting to have my second surgery with my gynecologist and a bowel surgeon to remove was is left and what has grown back if any.

I was diagnosed with stage 3 endometriosis, I didn’t know what this was let alone how to even say the word but i am learning and growing from it and super grateful for people like Annie who are making sure there is more awareness out there for it. It’s not a shameful disease but people make it out to be just cause they know very little about it.