Have you ever gone to the hospital in pain? The first thing the nurse asks you is to rate your pain on a scale from 1 - 10.
Since the age of 12 I have been asked this questions hundreds of times. Since the day I got my very first visit from Aunt Flo I knew something was terribly wrong with my body. And I don't mean I was a little 12 year old freaked out by becoming a women. My mother made sure she properly educated me and answered all my questions about puberty before it happened, so I was well prepared.
The difference was when all my friends were just popping Advil and moving on with their monthly cramps I was bedridden. I was never "regular" with my time of the month, we attributed it to my low body fat mass as I was beginning to become a serious dancer. Sometimes I missed months sometimes it happened for weeks on end, but every single time I would be unable to move from the fetal position for days.
My family doctor always told us that I just had a low threshold for pain and I would just have to get use to cramps, but they just got worse as I got older.
When I started high school I would be in the ER multiple times a month, crying in pain. The doctors there also told me the exact same thing as my family doctor.. "Take some Advil and get over it". At this point my parents began getting upset, clearing no doctor could find something wrong with me so I must be imagining it.
In my senior year in high school I was finally given an answer (not the right one) but an answer/step in the right direction none the less. I was diagnosed with complex ovarian cysts. During this time I missed about a month on and off of school, my teachers sure love that..
So my doctor sent my to a gyno and she did started me a different birth controls to try and tame my period.. nothing worked.
My first year of college I did what every teenager wants to do, I moved 5 hours away to go to college. My roommate too me to the ER many times and each time my parents made the trip and brought me home for a few days to recover. I dropped out 3 weeks short of finishing my first year.
So our fix to this was to apply to a college close by so I could live at home. Out of my 5 day schedule I might have made it to class 2 days a week if I was lucky.
Half way through first semester I get a new gyno who insists on doing surgery 2 weeks after our first consultation. So I skipped a couple weeks of school and went under the knife. My diagnostic laporoscopy confirmed I had endometriosis. A autoimmune/chronic pain disease where the lining of the uterus grows within the abdomen, on the organs. This causes internal bleeding monthly, scaring, horrible pain and infertility.
I was then put on a hormone therapy which was suppose to help suppress the pain and slow down the growth of the endo tissue. 6 months later my gyno had me admitted into the hospital and I had emergency surgery to remove the endo growing inside me. Unfortunately, not all of it was removed and I gained no relief from this surgery.
Now I live with a constant 3 on the pain scale. I do not live a day without the pain..
Tonight it's a 6
Since the age of 12 I have been asked this questions hundreds of times. Since the day I got my very first visit from Aunt Flo I knew something was terribly wrong with my body. And I don't mean I was a little 12 year old freaked out by becoming a women. My mother made sure she properly educated me and answered all my questions about puberty before it happened, so I was well prepared.
The difference was when all my friends were just popping Advil and moving on with their monthly cramps I was bedridden. I was never "regular" with my time of the month, we attributed it to my low body fat mass as I was beginning to become a serious dancer. Sometimes I missed months sometimes it happened for weeks on end, but every single time I would be unable to move from the fetal position for days.
My family doctor always told us that I just had a low threshold for pain and I would just have to get use to cramps, but they just got worse as I got older.
When I started high school I would be in the ER multiple times a month, crying in pain. The doctors there also told me the exact same thing as my family doctor.. "Take some Advil and get over it". At this point my parents began getting upset, clearing no doctor could find something wrong with me so I must be imagining it.
In my senior year in high school I was finally given an answer (not the right one) but an answer/step in the right direction none the less. I was diagnosed with complex ovarian cysts. During this time I missed about a month on and off of school, my teachers sure love that..
So my doctor sent my to a gyno and she did started me a different birth controls to try and tame my period.. nothing worked.
My first year of college I did what every teenager wants to do, I moved 5 hours away to go to college. My roommate too me to the ER many times and each time my parents made the trip and brought me home for a few days to recover. I dropped out 3 weeks short of finishing my first year.
So our fix to this was to apply to a college close by so I could live at home. Out of my 5 day schedule I might have made it to class 2 days a week if I was lucky.
Half way through first semester I get a new gyno who insists on doing surgery 2 weeks after our first consultation. So I skipped a couple weeks of school and went under the knife. My diagnostic laporoscopy confirmed I had endometriosis. A autoimmune/chronic pain disease where the lining of the uterus grows within the abdomen, on the organs. This causes internal bleeding monthly, scaring, horrible pain and infertility.
I was then put on a hormone therapy which was suppose to help suppress the pain and slow down the growth of the endo tissue. 6 months later my gyno had me admitted into the hospital and I had emergency surgery to remove the endo growing inside me. Unfortunately, not all of it was removed and I gained no relief from this surgery.
Now I live with a constant 3 on the pain scale. I do not live a day without the pain..
Tonight it's a 6