It was junior year in college, I’m out for a run and the pain is shooting through me. I’m a half mile away from my house. I run as fast as I can because I know that I have to go to the bathroom. I have to puke or poop to release anything to make this pain go away. I make it to the bathroom and I fall on the floor as if I’m surrendering from some sort of battle. I stay there for an hour because I can’t move. My husband, Nabih, comes home from work to find me on the floor. He tells me that I can’t keep doing this. I can’t try to fight this battle alone and he can’t keep watching me do it.
That’s when I made YET ANOTHER doctor’s appointment. I was convinced that I would hear the same old stuff about me imagining my pain and that I was a head-case. But I went anyways and Nabih went with me. I think he mostly was going with to make sure that I wouldn’t cancel it or change my mind. Haha. And that probably would’ve been the case. Anyways, we were sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for the new OB to come in. I was so nervous. Finally, he knocked on the door and came inside. Nabih did most of the talking about what had been going on. The OB said that I had a few options. I can change my birth control YET again to see if it would help my pain or help me be more regular or I can have surgery where they would be able to see if I actually had Endometriosis. Nabih had the easy answer, surgery. But even then I was questioning it. I turned to him and said, “but what if I’m just crazy?” All the doctors along the way that told me that it was in my head were controlling this moment for me. I was terrified of going in to surgery and have them find nothing. Nabih made up my mind for me and we planned on the surgery.
I was 21 years old. I got prepared for a laparoscopic surgery and woke up hours later feeling pretty sore. I remember my OB coming in with a big smile on his face and he said “Congratulations! You have Endometriosis.” Now, everyone else that had this type of surgery would probably throw their shoe at him, but not me. Tears were welling up in my eyes and that feeling of content-ness was reaching me as his words sunk in. He knew how terrified I was at the fact that they would find nothing, but they didn’t. They found the nasty tissue bound to lots of organs inside me. It was stuck to my intestines and my bladder and every other organ it could reach. My OB cauterized all that tissue that wasn’t where it was supposed to be. He did tell me that he couldn’t cauterize the tissue on my bladder because he didn’t want to burn a hole in my bladder. I didn’t hate him for leaving some inside me, but I sure did hate Endometriosis. You can imagine how you would feel after a probe burning all of your insides. I was sore and in a lot of pain. I could feel every bump in the car on the way home. This is a message to all of those OB’s and doctor’s that told me that I was crazy and that I was too young to have Endometriosis. You’re wrong and I’m proof.
In my next post I’ll go on to tell about how it was after my laparoscopy. Subscribe to follow along on my journey with Endometriosis! And comment/ask questions if you have any! I’d love to help.