I visited my general OB-GYN after experiencing abnormal bleeding and increasingly debilitating pelvic pain during both ovulation and menstruation.” That was when I started looking into endometriosis more seriously and began to suspect that I had it.”Īnother contributor, Lisa, told us that she had a similar experience: “I realized that I might have endometriosis after receiving abnormal results from a transvaginal ultrasound. I believe I was 28 years old when the pain and other symptoms started happening daily and just didn’t stop. But as the severity of my symptoms increased, I started to wonder if maybe this wasn’t so normal. At first, I didn’t identify with it, because I’d been told that period pain is normal. “I just happened to hear about endometriosis online, on social media. Around my mid-20s, I started to experience pain more often, not just during my period,” she said. “I’ve had painful periods my entire life, but for a long time, I’d never heard of endometriosis.
They can be every single day,” she explained.īecause endometriosis can affect so many parts of the body - including the vagina and rectum, intestines, bladder, and diaphragm - doctors may misdiagnose it as a different chronic condition.Īnother woman, Martha, also told us that it was only when she started to experience chronic pain between periods that she realized she might have a gynecologic condition. The symptoms are all over the map, and they don’t only happen during someone’s period. The symptoms range from abdominal pain to brain fog and fatigue, to chest pain and shortness of breath, to nerve pain and pain with urinating. “To date, endometriosis has been found in every single organ in the body. “Some common misconceptions are that endometriosis is just a bad period, when, in reality, it is a highly inflammatory, full-body disease,” Rishe told MNT. “fter many MRIs and ultrasound scans, they concluded that I must have endometriosis, based on symptoms alone,” she added. While the pain often occurs during menstruation, it can also occur between periods due to the lesions and scarring caused by endometriosis.Īlma, one of the women who spoke to MNT about their experience, said that she realized she might have endometriosis when “he pain had moved from just my ovaries to my intestines and overall stomach area.” The most recognizable symptom that accompanies endometriosis is debilitating pain, not just in the pelvic area but also of the lower back, during bowel movements and during or after sexual intercourse with vaginal penetration. *įor an informed perspective on the difficulties that accompany the task of raising awareness of the facts versus myths about endometriosis, we have also spoken to Jenneh Rishe, a registered nurse and founder of the nonprofit organization The Endometriosis Coalition. Medical News Today have spoken to three women with diagnosed endometriosis to find out more about their experience of obtaining a diagnosis: what made it difficult, whether the treatment they received was helpful, and how this chronic condition has been affecting their lives. The severe pain and bleeding and other incapacitating symptoms that often accompany endometriosis mean that the life quality of those who live with this condition is impacted in serious ways.ĭespite this, it can take anywhere between 4 and 11 years for women to receive the correct diagnosis, and as many as six out of every 10 cases of endometriosis may remain undiagnosed. This issue can affect all people assigned as female at birth, but it often goes undiagnosed, partly due to gender stereotyping.Īvailable data indicate that around 10–15% of all women live with endometriosis, a chronic condition in which tissue similar to uterine lining grows outside the uterus. Share on Pinterest Image credit: Maskot/Getty Images
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