Follow up appointment

[Gina32]

I have recently been diagnosed with endometriosis and had a laparoscopic procedure to confirm this.

I have my follow up appointment soon and I just don’t really know what to expect. I don’t know what questions to ask and to what extent they can answer them.

Minus the pain and pain relief, my most biggest concern is being able to conceive. I’m 23 and me and my partner are thinking about trying. I know that endo gets worse over time and I would my rather try now than to wait and it become worse and more painful. Is this the type of thing I can talk to my gynaecologist about or are they not allowed to advice you on things like this?

I also want to talk about pain relief with them but they say about just the contraception type of pain relief and obviously that’s no good if I’m wanting to try and conceive. When I’ve mentioned it previously, all I’ve got is.. you’ll have to just put up with it. I don’t feel as this is a sufficient answer.

Just looking for some advice from someone that’s had this follow up appointment so I know what kind of thing to expect?

Thank you x

[kelsbels88]

Hi Gina

I’m sorry to hear you’re going through this horrible dilemma.

In terms of asking them questions I would say get them to be specific about where they have found it and what this means for you going forward both fertility and treatment.

In my experience they tend to ask which you favour pain management or fertility sadly because of the nature of the condition there isn’t a treatment to help both at the same time.

I too had to deal with this dilemma and was told that I have severe or stage 4 endo which has effected my fertility by blocking tubes and connecting organs together including my bowel, I am currently waiting for surgery. At my last surgery they told me they had cleared a tube which meant we had a small chance of natural conception but to this day no luck. I made the personal decision that if my only way to have children was through ivf then I wanted my body to be in the best place possible and have elected to have surgery first. I want to give the ivf the best chance possible to work but everyone is different and unfortunately this condition effects everyone differently.

Although it is a joint decision just remember that you are going through it day in, day out so be kind to yourself and take time to slow down when you need to, although I know this is far easier said than done.

I got to my follow up and was grateful they had taken pictures I took pictures of those as they proved I wasn’t going crazy and that there was some thing wrong with me. As you may know, on the outside you don’t look sick so people don’t think you are. I had a lot of this at the beginning before my diagnosis.

I hope you take care of yourself this is a gruelling condition that can take its toll so as I said be kind to yourself when you can

Kelly xx