My story begins when I was 12 years old. My first period was my first abnormal period. I wouldn't stop bleeding. I finally told my mom because I thought it wasn't normal. She took me to see our family physician and she put me on birth control to stop the bleeding. Well, that didn't work at first. Then she switched to another brand. Finally after four different pills I saw relief. It was almost 3 months since I started and I finally stopped bleeding. My periods back then, and still, are so painful that I can barely move around for the first few days.
I continued on birth control till I heard about the Depro Prevra shot. I asked my doctor and she said that because I wasn't experiencing any relief in pain while on the pill I could try the DP shot. Well, I got on the shot and stayed on it with some relief in pain. I stayed on DP for almost 5 years. While on it I had less pain than before, but it was still there. But I had no periods and for a young woman that is a blessing.
Shortly after starting DP I started getting migranes. Before the shot I had never even had a slight headache. Even now, several years later I still get migranes and cluster headaches often. I huess that's just one of the nasty side effects. I got married around the age of 19 and lost my parents medical insurance. My husband had no insurance at the time, so I had to go off of the shot for a while. I was off of it for 8 months when I discovered that I was pregnant with our daughter. In November of 1999 I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. I had very little pain while I was pregnant, but it was there.
After the birth I was put on birth control pills again, but I kept forgetting to take them so they put me on the shot again. I was in a lot of pain then, but they just told me it was part of being a woman. At this point I still had no idea I had endometriosis. My mother-in-law thought I could possibly have it, but my doctor at the time said that was silly and to just deal with the pain.
So I lived on pain killers, mostly Motrin because the doctors would prescribe nothing for me. In April 2002 I found I was pregnant again. I was told at the age of 16 that I would never be able to carry a child full term, but here I am pregnant with my second child. I gave birth to healthy baby boy in January of 2003.
After my son was born my husband and I decided to get my tubes tied. During this opperation no one saw anything wrong with me and the doctor told me that he found no endometriosis. Two months later I went to a different doctor complaining of extreme pain. The pain was so bad that I would no longer be put off. They done a laproscopy to remove some cysts that they found in an ultrasound. During this surgery they found my whole insides covered with endometriosis. Neither me nor my current doctor know how they could have missed that much endometriosis growing everywhere.
Now I'm faced with how I want to deal with this. I now have a name for my pain and I know that I don't have normal periods with normal pain. It's nice to finally be told that something is wrong and they can have treatments for it. I know that sounds funny, that I'm glad I have endo, but it's not. I'm not glad I have endo, but I'm glad I have a name for it and the pain is validated.
