My experience of endometriosis- part 1 - the journey

This will be in a few parts as I do not think anyone could cope reading all sbout my endo in one go!
In honour of endo awareness month I am going to talk about how endo has affected (and ruined) my life.

I remember being 15 and leaning against a fence in agony and being sick because of my period pain. I remember telling my mum and she thinking I was exaggerating. I ended up going on the pill at 16 to try to control the pain which helped a little.

At the age of 18 I got rushed to hospital with suspected appendicitis, which turned out not to be the case. My doctor took my history and suspected endo. I had my first laparoscopy a few months later which confirmed I had grade IV/IV endo, some of which was lasered away (sadly this always grows back).
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A few more years of being on the pill, marriage to my long term BF and then we started trying for a baby. Coming off the pill was awful. The period pains were hard to cope with and the amount of bleeding was so bad. We tried for nearly a year, but I had to go back on the pill a couple of times to calm my endo down.

I saw an gynae who recommended another lap. I had the surgery and then woke up to find out they did nothing but examine me inside as my endo was so bad that surgery to remove the deposits was too risky due to potential bleeding. I was put on 6 months of depo zoladex to calm my endo down. This put me in a state of menopause. Let me tell you, menopause at the age of 25 is not fun. I know we will all go through it, but not artificially at that age!!

My 3rd laparoscopy caused me a lot of problems as I had my appendix removed, my broad liagents removed and a mass on my liver biopsied, all due to the damage my endo has caused. One of my tubes was also found to be blocked and the other abnormal.

It was recommended we jump straight to IVF due to my endo and rubbish tubes. We have go e through 3 fresh Ivf cycles and 2 frozen cycles do far. We are about to do our third frozen cycle after I finish down regulating. So far it's been a BFN every time.

I feel endo is preventing me from having my dream of a baby, of a family.
Next posts to come will be more about the daily pain and the emotional aspects of endo