From UK to Thailand for surgery

[strboros]

You may call me impatient but I went through a fair bit in my life, endured many different types of challenges, have a fairly high pain threshold, but when my endo got really bad last summer/autumn I just couldn't cope with it, nor physically nor mentally. I believe that pain is a symptom and shouldn't be brushed under the carpet with pills.

Knowing the NHS situation and after a very unfortunate accident, I went to see a private gynae in West London. He found a chocolate cyst 5+cm and prescribed he Nuvaring to manage/control it. That's when all hell broke loose and instead of having pain 15 days in a month on a medium level, I was in pain every day for 2 months (eventually I stopped it) so much that I had to start taking painkillers 4x a day and fight two GPs to give me referral to one of the Endo clinics.

Eventually the referral letter came through, by which point I was in contact with a few nurses and centres, even investigated private routes, etc. The GP said private is not better, but more instant. Well, I don' want to live in pain for months on end when we know the solution. Anyway. In the meantime I had a trip booked for Thailand for 3 months - Jan-MArch 2018. When the earliest appointment offer for consultation came through for 31st of Jan I was in tears. Then I had the registration appointemt via phone with the specialist nurse and I came to the conclusion that delaying my trip would just mean more pain and no joy so I didn't.

Instead, on the 3rd working day of my stay, I went into a hospital to see a surgeon and see what she says. I was in the theatre the day after, full open abdominal surgery, removal of two chocolate cysts, a fibroid, some dead tissue and it was suspected that I may have adhesions on the bowel. The latter turned out to be negative. I was in theatre for 2,5 hrs, in the hospital for 3 days after and now I have a roughly 15cm scar on my lower tummy.

As you can guess the recovery is much longer than after a laparoscopy but this way we know what was there and what's been removed (I have pretty rank pics about the tissues), it cost me half of what the lap would have cost privately and this included hospital stay, meals and medications plus Cerazette prescription for the first month.

And now my quest starts about how to change my lifestyle to beat this hormonal imbalance and give myself a bigger chance of not developing these again, while also traveling and being careful enough to accommodate recovery.

I am a personal trainer and I was limited in my profession for months and in my own training due to all the symptoms and side-effects. Fingers crossed, once recovered I'll be able to get back on my raining properly again.

Thanks for reading. Don't let them beat you down. It's not just in your head, if it hurts, bang on that door till someone listens or find another door.