One step closer to finding out if I have Endometriosis or fibroids or if it’s just been IBS all along

[Nightingale89]

Hi everyone! Iv just signed up after reading some of your stories.

I have just recieved my referral letter to my local gynaecology unit to investigate a range of strange symptoms Iv been experiencing.

This is my story, I’ll be curious to see if anyone can relate.

As a teenager, my periods were regular, not very heavy but always very sore - but manageable with paracetamol. I started taking Microgynon in 2009, at the age of 20 and this made my periods lighter and erased my pains completely.

Then about a year later, I went through a really tragic experience, which my body reacted to by giving me months of diarrhoea. After letting this go unchecked, thinking it was just the shock and stress of it all and that it would correct itself, I developed another problem. It happened whenever I emptied my bowel or sat down and felt like my rectum had been blown up like a balloon to its bursting point and any little pressure would cause the sharpest, stabbing, knock the wind out of you, stop you in your tracks, probably shoot yourself through the ceiling above your bog if you weren’t expecting it...type pain. After a colonoscopy, my doctor diagnosed me with Proctalgia Fugax - simply meaning a “pain in the bum”. After this revelation prognosis, and the assurance I wasn’t dying, I decided to carry on as before and wait to see if the problem would sort itself. After a couple more months, the diarrhoea became less severe and the pain occurred less often. Unfortunately, the pain always returned on my period and did so for at least 4 years before disappearing completely. From then on I accepted that I probably have some form of IBS as my bowel habits were never really the same and those symptoms always flare when I’m on my period.

I’ll jump to the start of 2018. Suddenly, period pains that had been absent for 8 years came back, although not as bad. I started experiencing a severe sharp pain around my right ovary while on my period that my doctor suspected was a cyst but asked me to come back after two months if it didn’t go away on it’s on - which fortunately it did and has never come back since (pats wooden coffee table). I then started feeling a sensation of pressure and fullness in my rectum and an inability to empty my bowels properly; in contrast there was the odd time I thought I wouldn’t make it to the loo (all just when I’m on my period). Iv had two external ultrasound examinations and each has shown nothing. Recently Iv been barely aware of womb pains, I seem to experience cramps purely in my bum.

My mum was diagnosed with Endometriosis, Fibroids and Cysts but can’t really relate to what I’m experiencing. For now I’ll just need to wait and see if the gynaecologist thinks Iv inherited my mums genes or all this is simply IBS.