The Life of a Woman in Chronic Pain

Endometriosis (endo) is a genealogical condition which affects approximately 176 million women worldwide. This disease causes many symptoms in women of a sexually mature age. On average, endo takes seven years to diagnose and is done so through a laparoscopy to look at all female reproductive organs.

What is endometriosis?

Endometriosis occurs when the endometrial tissue shreds during a woman's monthly period. In a normal period, the tissue comes out of the body creating the period. In women who have endo, not all of that tissue exits the body and some attaches itself to other organs and bodily structures. Endometriosis comes in three stages;

• Mild
• Moderate
• Severe

The endometrial tissue can attach itself to many different places such as the pelvic wall, ovaries, pouch of Douglas, bowl, bladder, and the cervix. In my case, I was found to have moderate endometriosis on my pelvic walls, cervix, and pouch of Douglas. One common misunderstanding of endo is that the more pain you have, the worse your condition. FALSE. You could have stage one—mild endometriosis—and have THE WORST PAIN imaginable. The best way I can describe my pain is like someone is carving out my insides like a pumpkin daily or like a grenade is going off inside you.

There is no known cure for this disease and it very much feels like you're just left to get on with it. Some days I, like thousands of other women, just can't cope with the pain anymore, which is where the use of NSAIDs and strong painkillers come in. For my pain, as well as heat pads, I use morphine....yes morphine. I am expected to try and live a normal life whilst in agony and high as a kite. Of course though, the doctors don't like me taking morphine because of how addictive it is, but in my honest opinion...IT TASTES LIKE CRAP and believe me...I'm really not a fussy eater, I LOVE FOOD.

Endometriosis makes you so self-conscious about your body, one day I can be wearing my normal size 12 skinny jeans and a nice top and the next I can just about fit in size 16 loose trousers and look like Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!! Of course you can't bloat that much and have no side effects, so I have about as many stretch marks on my stomach as a zebra has stripes but who cares because I've grown to realise that's the life I was dealt and I really don't give a f**k what people think. One major symptom that does get to me though is sex, or should I say a SEVERE LACK OF....ughhhh, sex is unbearable and the only way I can describe it without you experiencing it is probably, a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire coated in the world's hottest chilly powder. Yes, not nice at all, so I avoid it like the plague.

This one isn't so much a symptom but more of pet hate. "Oh, you don't look ill." Please hang on one moment whilst I find a brick to smash your skull in with. INVISIBLE illness, invisible being the KEYWORD. My uterus is not on the outside of my body for all to see, so of course you can't see it. By the way, if you're reading this and you're one of those people who say "You don't look ill" or "You look fine to me," please don't be surprised or offended when you get a swift right hook to the jaw, it's nothing personal. Honest.

21 going on 91.

Going out every weekend, holidays, festivals, working, university—all the things a normal 21-year-old is doing and all the things I've had to give up in the past 12 months and not because I'm boring. I can't even plan the smallest things now like going for a meal with my friends or a cinema date with my boyfriend because if I do, guess who decides to show up, ENDOMETRIOSIS. It's like walking around with one of those cartoon devil and angles on your shoulders, except that they're both endometriosis and whatever you do, they'll be there to ruin it. We all have good days and bad days, although earlier I said I experience pain everyday, some days it's manageable and I can go out and do things within reason but others I can't.

Sleeping beauty.

When you have endometriosis you are ALWAYS tired and I mean always.... I get ten hours of sleep a night and I'm still tired. Here's something to make you laugh... I went to the eye people to get some contacts so I don't have to have four eyes all the time, but turns out you can't sleep in contact lenses so they refused to give them to me because sometimes I just fall asleep for a short nap!! Apparently, two to four hours isn't a short nap so I couldn't qualify for them, even know I was abnormally good and putting the contacts in and out (that's one talent for my CV). Sleeping all the time isn't to bad though because it makes the day go quicker and who doesn't love sleeping? My mum tells me all the time, as a baby all I would do is eat and sleep and would sleep for around 20 hours a day!! so the saying is true...a leopard never changes its spots and I'm proud to say that I'm not lazy, I was born this way.

I've babbled on enough now so it's time to summarise (I actually need a nap), endometriosis is shit, if you don't laugh, you'll cry and the most important thing, no matter how bad it gets, your glass should ALWAYS be half full not half empty!!