I remember the eve of the 6th grade balling my eyes out because that little red coming of age friend appeared in my underwear for the first time. Most girls my age thought getting their period was a rite of passage and an honor. Not me. I don’t know why I was so devastated maybe some parts of me knew how being a woman would eventually backfire on me in the form of pcos and endometriosis. My earliest memory of realizing my periods were different from other girls was, at 15 years old and a virgin nonetheless I looked 8 months pregnant. Girls would snicker and start rumors behind my back those rumors were only intensified when I disappeared for 2 months for major surgery to remove grapefruit sized cysts off my ovaries. At 15 years old my cysts were removed and my ovaries re-constructed (mind you I was young and barely realized the purpose of a ovary).
The next 10 years of my life would be followed by misdiagnosis, depo shot treatments, and surgery after surgery for ovarian cysts at 23 I was finally
diagnosed with pcos. Then as time wore on and I was ending up in emergency rooms for periods I realised it could be pcos, but this felt different. Then in December 2016 a doctor attempted to remove cysts but because so they were so entangled in scar tissue (later to be diagnosed as endo) she was able to successfully do anything for me. I was on various medications all of which made me feel worse and worse.
Finally, in May 2017 I had a surgery with the number one oncologist in Colorado and was officially diagnosed with endo, however, was also told my ovaries were not salvageable. That I would never have natural born children at 25 that’s no small thing to here. It’s been 2 years since surgery and though my endo pain has greatly subsided, I still deal with the occasional soreness and pain ridden days in bed. Not to mention the unbearable pain of being infertile. It is through my story; I hope others find hope and their voice and are able to salvage their own fertility. Endo thought 80 percent of the pain is managed will always affect me, but I choose to be a survivor of endo not a victim. Even after all endo has taken from me.
