These stories can help other women so they do not feel so alone when trying to cope with effects of this disease.
by Megan Israels
(Grand Rapids, MI)
I have had severe pain with endometriosis on and off since October 2011. My first trip to the emergency room, I was discharged with no causes or diagnosis.
After 3 months of back and forth between the doctor, emergency room, and specialist, I had my gall bladder removed. In the beginning of January 2012, I began feeling almost the same pain, except lower than the rib cage, because I didn't want to go through it again, I ignored the pain, but two weeks of steady and increasingly worse abdominal pain, I went to my primary care who informed I have a UTI.
After a week of continuing pain, as a UTI has never made me feel so much pain, I went to the emergency room as I continually kept passing out or vomiting.
Due to so much inflammation on my right side, the surgeon was not able to determine if I had appendicitis, or chrones disease possibly, therefore he sent me to an internalists who ruled out appendicitis (as I still had an infection) and a cyst on my right ovary.
The internalist suggested that I go to an OBGYN to get checked for possible Endometriosis. After all the tests performed in the hospital, the doctor called me and asked that I come in three weeks earlier than my doctors appointment.
When I arrived at the doctors office, they informed me that I do have endometriosis and they are going to perform a laproscopy to find out the extent of what stage I am in.
I have always had womanly issues since I began my period and my mother and my grand-mother both have endometriosis.