Your period should still allow you to go about your life.
If you are… Missing school or work, vomiting, having such severe pain that you can’t alleviate with usual over the counter medications, going to the emergency room for pain or heavy flow, having deep penetrative pain with sex, painful bowel movements, pelvic pain between your periods, you may have endometriosis.
The above are how many endometriosis patients present. Some have suffered for years. Some have found great relief with oral contraceptives or other medication. Some have surgery. Some suffer from infertility.
The best thing to do is to keep looking for answers, finding a gynecologist who can diagnose and treat you. THE ABOVE IS NOT NORMAL.
Be patient, as endometriosis patients go to several doctors sometimes before finding the answer. Stick with your doctor once you find her, and sometimes it takes more than one treatment to find it.
Endometriosis is hereditary.
If your sister or mom has it, it is high likelihood that you could too.
It is suspected when patients have painful periods, painful intercourse with deep penetration, and painful bowel movements. This is what we call clinical endometriosis, or endometriosis that has not been proven surgically.
To be sure, although not always necessary, laparoscopy is done for surgical diagnosis. This means a camera or laparoscope is inserted at the belly button, and the pelvis and abdomen is surveyed to determine the cause of pelvic pain for the patient. It is a disease where endometrium (the lining that sheds with your period) which should live inside the uterus, is also outside of the uterus, in the pelvis.
Laparoscopy is the only way to see INSIDE the pelvis.
The goals of surgery are to diagnose and, if present, treat endometriosis. It is a chronic condition that until menopause can continue to cause pain. This is because until the natural decline in hormones (menopause), it is fed by our natural hormones. Generally, medication to block those hormones are needed, or even used without or prior to surgery, if not conceiving. Hormonal contraceptives, or other types of hormone blocking medications such as Lupron or Orilissa are often used.
If you have been suffering, it is time to see us. Find answers.
What questions do you have about endometriosis ?
