diary of an unhappy uterus | part three.
I think now would be a good time to share my story. I'm currently waiting for the full effects of Visanne to hit me (spoiler alert, so far it's been pretty rough), before I share my experience on it. So in order to kill some time, here it's my full story.
So, let me start at the beginning. My periods have always been extremely painful and extremely long (10 days plus). When I was in my teens, I thought this was normal and thought it was something that came along with growing up. Periods always felt so secretive. When we talked about it in science, the teacher would whisper the word ‘vagina’ and the boys would giggle. At lunch time I would see girls hiding their tampons in their lunchboxes, and I remember the panic on their face when the saw me watching. I guess this is what taught me that period were something you dealt with in silence.
So I was in silence for a while, until the beginning of 2017, (I was 17, about to turn 18), when I had ruptured an ovarian cyst. I was absolutely humidified when the doctors read that out loud. I remember being so embarrassed, had the person in the bed next to me heard? The whole hospital probably heard. I had surgery a few days later, where they removed the cyst and some Endometriosis they had found. For a shy teenager I hated having everyone constantly looking at me, cleaning me and changing me. In that week I had heard the word ‘period’ more than I ever had in my entire life so far. At the time, I didn’t think any of it was a big deal. I didn’t really know what Endometriosis was, and they told me they had removed it, so I didn’t think it was something I needed to worry about.
For the next 6 months my periods were actually decent. They were shorter, and a lot less painful, but it wasn’t long before the pain crept up again, and by 2018 my periods were back to being long and excruciating. I had to take several days off work every month, and during this time I experience severe bouts of sadness, nausea, fainting, dizziness, pelvic pain, back pain and fatigue.
There were two times during 2018 where the pain was so bad I thought I had ruptured another cyst. I was 19 by then, and I had a big shock when not being classified as a child, meant my health concerns were not taken seriously. The first time I visited Emergency for my pain I was told that it was a ‘bad period’ and it would be over in a few days. The second time, I was refused treatment and went back the next day only to be told I was constipated and was then given an enema (which made things way worse). After this, both me and my partner (who would miss work every month to care for me) felt incredibly hopeless.
Even after expressing concerns to numerous health care providers about another cyst or more Endometriosis, it felt like everyone decided to ignore it or just did not seem to care. After another intense episode I was too scared to go back to emergency because of the fear they’d turn me down again, so I booked an appointment with a GP. She specialised in Women’s Health, which at the time I didn’t think was a big deal, but now I am so thankful for. She sent me to my first internal ultrasound, which revealed signs of Adenoymosis. I was also extremely anaemic due to how heavy my periods were. She put me on the pill and we decided to tri-cycle, meaning having a period every 3 months. This was absolutely amazing for me for about a year. Although my periods were still crazy intense and painful, they only happened every three months which meant I could get on with my life.
And then (no surprises), this year they started getting worse. My past two periods have been so incredibly painful I have been unable to walk. In the past 6 months I have missed 4 weeks of work due to them. During these episodes all I manage to do is have a sip of water to take my Endone every 6 hours. It’s a pain I can’t even describe, and thinking about it whilst writing this has given me goosebumps. My GP did everything she could, Tranecamic Acid, Mefenamic Acid, but unfortunately nothing helped. Hence why I got my referral to the Gynaecologist, which I shared in my experience in Part 2 of the series.
If you got through this essay, thank you so much for reading my story! Even after all this I feel as though things are just starting, and I’m honoured to have you all on my journey with me.