A Letter to My Endo

[Nicola2401]

Hi ladies,

Having a really bad day today and it felt cathartic to write a letter to my endo. I may have become batsh*t crazy, but either way, I thought I'd share it with you all x

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Dear Endo,

It’s safe to say our relationship is a weird one, in that you’ve known me a lot longer than I’ve known you. 8 years longer to be exact. I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing that I only received my diagnosis aged 27, as part of me wishes I’d had an explanation all along for all the horrific symptoms I’ve suffered with over the years, while the other part of me is glad that I went through my teenage years and early twenties blissfully unaware, and believing that crippling period pain was normal (or, just my ‘bad luck’).

Either way, we are now fully acquainted, so I thought I’d reminisce over the good old years and take a trip down memory lane.

Where do I begin? Well, probably with an early memory of me being aged 13, on a 4-night school journey to Dover. It was an ‘adventure’ holiday, so we were out every day climbing trees and zip-wiring, and building rafts out of wood which we then had to sail on the lake. Not the most convenient time to have a ridiculously heavy period, especially when you’re half way up a climbing wall wearing pale grey tracksuit bottoms and you feel the dreaded drip down your leg, despite only changing your jumbo pad about an hour beforehand. Cue; running back to my dorm, sitting on the loo very confused whilst passing frighteningly large clots. Not to mention the pain. The rest of the trip went by in a blur, though I specifically remember hating every moment of the disco on the final night, and longing to get home to my Mum. You’re such a party pooper.

Or how about the time when you decided to rear your ugly head during my final year of school, while I was studying for my A-levels. I seem to remember a very uncomfortable English Literature lesson, where the pain was so bad, and I felt so faint, that I ran out of the class without saying anything, dripping with sweat which had soaked through my school uniform, and straight to the nurse’s office, where she told me that it’s ‘totally normal’ to have period pains and sent me on my way with some aspirin. Thanks for that.

Of course, now I think about it, I don’t remember ever having a ‘pain-free’ period. Some were better than others, don’t get me wrong, but I never understood how all my friends got off so lightly with their periods. They carried on playing sport as normal, didn’t ever have accidental ‘leaks’ (this happened to me on numerous occasions where I couldn’t find a way out of a lesson/exam to get to the loo in time) and certainly never took time off school for the pain. I remember being sent home regularly in tears, and because my parents were at work in London, various friends’ mums would pick me up and let me nap on their sofa, dosed up on painkillers, until my Mum could come and get me. But this was all totally normal, right?

It wasn’t until I was 26 that I decided to take further action, and figure out what you were once and for all. I was tired of dreading the arrival of my period, tired of struggling through and pretending everything was ok when it felt like a boxing match was taking place in my uterus, and even more tired of struggling to hold down a demanding job in Central London. Not to mention, the toll you were starting to take on my sex life with my boyfriend was just another addition to my daily worries. What if he got fed up of it all? What if I lost all my confidence and didn’t want to have sex with him anymore, and we broke up because of it? (NB, thankfully he’s amazing and we’re still together 4 years later).

I’ll never forget the one time, that I was in so much pain at work, and so fatigued from carrying you around with me, that I booked myself a meeting room at the other side of the office because ‘I had a phone call’, just so that I could have an hours’ nap. This may sound dramatic, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could all do that sometimes? But I’m telling you, if it wasn’t for this little trick (yes, I may have done it a few times), my boss would have found me fast asleep at my desk countless times. It wasn’t even a question of feeling a little weary, I simply had an inability to keep my eyelids open at some points. You are really, really exhausting, and I was worried you’d lose me my job on more than one occasion. Especially when my boss had to schedule a meeting with me to query my performance.

Not to mention the bloating you bring about. I’ll tell you what, I’ve now got a good idea of what I’ll look like at 3, 6 and 8 months pregnant. So thanks for that little insight. Oh, and thank you for forcing me to buy jeans and trousers in the next size just so that I could do my flies up. And bras, because for some reason my boobs decided to join in the party and become impossible to touch at all times of the month.

But, despite all of this, more GP appointments than I care to remember, and at least 3 visits to A&E, nobody, not once, mentioned your name. I apparently had everything else though - from IBS to stress, and from a ruptured ovarian cyst to stomach flu. Yes, you read the last one correctly. Why do you try to be so elusive, when 10% of the female population know you too? Seriously, you need to stop being such a coward.

One laparoscopy, numerous ultrasounds and rounds of hormonal treatments later, here we are again. November 2017, and you just won’t give up, will you. Thank you once again for temporarily (I say temporarily, because there’s no way you’re getting away with this one) ruining my sex life by causing me daily, throbbing pain - which, by the way, is whether or not I have my period - mental and physical exhaustion, and now a suspected ovarian cyst. Anything else you’d like to add to the mix while we’re at it?

The main point of this letter though, is not to wallow in the misery that you bring me, and so many other women around the world. It’s to remind you know that you that you won’t win. Us women are tough cookies, and it’ll take more than this to knock us. Even on the days where we would do anything to stay in bed, on the days where all we can face is coming home and lying on the sofa with a hot water bottle, or even on the days where we can barely walk from the pain, it will be impossible for you to beat us.

Let that be a warning to you.