Hey Everyone and welcome back to another post of Buzzy Bee Esther. In this post, I’m going to talk about my endometriosis story.
If you are new here, you will find posts about the honest truth about living the Medical Medium Lifestyle. I post recipes, information, and my story on this channel in hopes you will try it out yourself!
I started this post first because I forgot about my tumor stuff! I was so focused on fertility. As I looked back on my journey, I’m realizing I was more chronically ill than I believed!
In this post, you will find information about what inspired me to start this telling my story series with an Endo post I found on Instagram.
Then, I’m going to get into my story by dividing it into eras of my life thus far. I’m going to keep the information centered around women’s health and menstruation so if you don’t want to listen or hear details please skip!
Next week, I’ll get into why more of Endo. This week I’m focusing on my story and experience.
Here are the eras I’m going to cover:
- Childhood/teens
- Young Adulthood
- 2012 Surgery
- Weight and 7 years after surgery
- 2019 Going off birth control & fertility
- 2020 Finding Medical Medium
If you prefer to watch rather than read:
Why I Wanted to Start With Endometriosis Originally
Instagram Post I found 6-13-23
This post brings tears to my eyes because of some reactions to this! So many people have struggled with this disease and it is so sad. I also felt like I wasn’t so alone because I’m the only person I know in my immediate friend group that has this disease. At the same time, it amazes me how many people are dealing with this relatively unknown disease!
One person commented on this beautiful post that there was a troll saying that you can heal from Endo if you detox! I wonder if I was that troll because that does sound like something I would say, but I’m just trying to help!
I have Endo and detoxing has helped with the pain more tremendously than any aspirin, pill, or hormone therapy has which was prescribed by the doctor! Birth control worked for a long time, but as soon as I wanted to get pregnant, obviously, I went off it and the pains were UNBEARABLE!
Anyway, I wanted to get into my story more because I want people to know that you CAN HEAL! I’m still working on healing in this area, but the pains have gone down a lot!
My Story
So I’m going to break my story down into eras of my life.
- Childhood/teens
- Young Adulthood
- 2012 Surgery
- Weight and 7 years after surgery
- 2019 Going off birth control & fertility
- 2020 Finding Medical Medium
Childhood and Teenage Years
I have been dealing with problems since birth like I said in my previous post about being born with benign tumors. I think developing endometriosis was also because of the toxins and metals present in my body from birth inherited from my birth parents.
I started birth control in 10th grade for four reasons – irregular periods, heavy periods, painful periods, and cystic acne.
In elementary school, I had a few embarrassing moments with that time of the month because the flow was so heavy and unbearable at the time. In cheer one time I remember having to leave the game because it was coming down my leg when I wasn’t sure it was coming and it came very heavy. In school one time I remember having to go to the bathroom. I felt a lot fall out of me as I stood up and was worried it leaked even though I did have a pad on.
Then, every other month the pain was extremely difficult to deal with. In High School, I asked to see the nurse because the pain was so unbearable. I didn’t usually go to the nurse and she could see I was in a lot of pain just by looking at me. I ended up having to walk 1.5 miles home because everyone was working and couldn’t pick me up.
I was in so much pain that I kind of hunched over and walked really slowly to get home. Halfway through my walk, I started to feel better. When I got home the pain was actually pretty much gone! The nurse also gave me medicine so it could have been a combo of the movement and Advil. Movement and heat do help if you can get through the pain.
Bringing his information to my doctors resulted in them prescribing birth control even though I wasn’t sexually active. They said it regulated hormones and would make me feel better.
They didn’t ask me to track my period to see if it might be regular, they just gave me the pill without much guidance after that. I think I like a more holistic approach and none of my doctors provide that other than a couple of questions like, “Do you eat a balanced diet?”
They also prescribed it to me because I was getting cystic acne in my teenage years and that was part of the answer along with a lot of antibiotics and creams. I’ll get into more details about acne in another post!
It turns out my irregular periods were actually regular. My cycle was and is anywhere between 18-35 days long. Apparently, that is normal. I could never predict my periods though because of the change in the days at times and it wasn’t every four weeks like most people I knew. Now I use an ovulation and period app to help with predicting this and it usually helps a lot.
From 2002 to 2019 I was on birth control each month religiously. 17 years!
Young Adulthood
I was complaining for years of pain in my right side halfway through my cycle which is ovulation if you don’t know. I didn’t know this at the time. Also, doing the deed hurt a lot. I thought maybe it was because I didn’t see my partner often, I had no idea that this symptom could be a result of a disease!
Every time I brought up the pain to my gynecologist, she just dismissed it as cramps and said I was young. I wish I would have asked for an ultrasound at the time because I think my cyst was developing for years before they found it in 2012!
2012 Surgery
In October or November of 2012, I had an annual appointment with my gynecologist. When she did the internal exam, she thought I was pregnant! She ordered a vaginal ultrasound to check what was going on.
During the appointment, I could tell by my technician’s expression that something was wrong. She wouldn’t tell me much and said the doctor would call.
As I was walking out of the ultrasound appointment, I received a call from the doctor. She said it was a very large cyst and that she was worried that it might be cancer! I cried on the way home because it was all really scary. People die from cancer, and I was only 25!
My gynecologist recommended a doctor in Philly because she wasn’t comfortable taking the cyst out for the chance that it might be cancer. She assured me that I was young and it probably wasn’t cancer, but just in case she wanted someone from oncology to take it out so it didn’t spread. Apparently, if they go into the fluid around the cyst and get some of that fluid in the surrounding tissue, it could make cancer spread if it is cancerous.
There were more tests before surgery and there were some big names thrown around with diagnosis. I came in with a paper full of questions; none of which were answered because they had to do the surgery to get those answers. The Philly doctor recommended that I not research the names because I could scare myself. There were also several names that were possible because they didn’t know what it was yet. He wanted me to leave it to him and he’ll take care of it. That was reassuring and I felt like I was in capable hands.
I had major surgery on my abdomen in the beginning of December. They drained the fluid in the cyst and biopsied the tissue. It wasn’t cancerous, thank God! They could determine that the cyst was a chocolate cyst from the biopsy, AKA endometrioma. It wasn’t cancerous! An endometrioma. It is a cyst that has some solid and fluid parts in it, and it looks like chocolate because there is endometrial lining in there.
For those of you that don’t know, your endometrial lining is a lining in your uterus that a fertilized egg attaches to. It is the true life giver of a baby because if that egg does not attach to the endometrial lining then it will be discarded with the woman’s next menstrual cycle. So even if you have a fertilized egg that is viable to have a baby it is useless without a healthy endometrial lining to support that life and its initial stages.
Additionally, the endometrial lining is what sheds when we menstruate. So when women say they are bleeding they are not actually bleeding blood but they are bleeding their endometrial lining and shedding it to prepare the uterus for a new lining to develop and a new possible fertilized egg to attach in the next month.
Back to the story: The cyst that was removed on my right side was the size of a cantaloupe. They gave my parents and I a number for the capacity of fluid that came out, and my dad who is a math wiz, said it was the size of a cantaloupe! They ended up taking the ovary with the cyst because they couldn’t remove the cyst alone. That was all I could gather about the conversation after surgery because I was on a lot of morphine. They had me on a morphine drip.
My parents and Chris who I just started dating were there in the hospital with me every day! I was there for a few days afterward because they did major surgery on my abdomen. Also, I think I woke up during the surgery. They say redheads metabolize anesthesia faster, and I think this is true from my experiences with surgeries.
As a side note: the surgery experience is what made me fall in love with Chris because he was there every single day in the hospital for almost a week while I was recovering from surgery. I knew he was a good one!
The doctor told me they saw some endometrial lining on my bladder when they were doing surgery which is when I was diagnosed with endometriosis. I was complaining about pain in my ovaries every time I ovulated and had my period for years!
Part of the problem with endometriosis is that no one really knows what the hell it is. First, laparoscopic surgery or surgery like mine is the only way to diagnose endometriosis where the doctor can see the endometrial lining in other areas of the body. In one post I read they said it could get pretty far away from the reproductive system which amazed me. Women with endometriosis have it most of their life and complain of horrible pains but are just written off as standard pain with their period without much consideration.
When I asked my thousands of questions at a follow-up, all of the doctors couldn’t tell me why it happened or even what it was in the first place. I was told it was just an endometrial lining that didn’t know where to go so it went wherever It wanted. I was told my body was attacking itself and there was really nothing I could do.
They said I wouldn’t have problems getting pregnant when I told them my plan was to have babies in a couple of years.
Those couple of years turned into 7!
Weight and 7 Years after Surgery
A couple of years turned into 7 because I didn’t feel settled in my career as a teacher. I was moving schools pretty much every 2 years because of circumstances like freezing pay, or enrollment dropped. Teaching is not easy. Moving schools and learning new systems and curricula was even harder! Additionally, I was in urban education for most of my career which is even harder!
After surgery, Chris traded in one of his sports cars in preparation for us to have a kid like right away even though we weren’t married because of my endometriosis situation. In hindsight, I kind of wished we tried then. However, I do believe things always work out for a reason and I’m glad we had time to just be without kids for our relationship so far.
I lived my life focusing on my career and spending WAY too much time on it when I should have been focusing on finding answers! But I continued to eat not so well and ate even more takeout than I used to while living on my own and with my parents. Before I met Chris I would have takeout and fast food maybe 2-3 times a week. After meeting him this doubled.
2012 was the beginning of our relationship, and I conformed to Chris’s way of eating quickly because I love food. He took me to all the local restaurant spots where my family never liked to eat! I induced in a lot of cheese and desserts with no restrictions because he never made me feel bad about my food choices. I loved every minute of enjoying all the bad food, but I also gained a lot of weight eating this way.
I continued my birth control and I was on many more medications through these years because more things started to develop. I was getting migraines, acid reflux, anxiety, and more! I’ll post more about separate conditions and symptoms in The My Story Series on my YouTube Channel so be sure to subscribe to get notifications about when the next episode is out.
2019 Off Birth Control & a Little on Fertility
So I was working in Chester at a Charter school and I decided to go off birth control after speaking with a coworker. The conversation was around feeling ready. I don’t think anyone really feels ready to have kids! I knew I wanted them. And I didn’t know what my future held, but I figured why not start now. I only did this with her encouragement.
This was in June 2019 I decided to go off birth control.
After going off birth control I had a lot of different pains and feelings in my body. There were spasms I never felt before. These spasms made me feel like I might be pregnant but I never was. I know from MM info what it was now, but stay tuned for the post next week to find out!
My periods were VERY painful. I had to call out of work a few times on day 1 of my cycle because I was in so much pain I couldn’t even stand! I would spend those days in a warm tub trying to get relief, but it didn’t come.
I would always take like 6-8 Advil during my period, and even with this dosage, the pains were unbearable at times. Endometriosis is no joke.
Then came the pains with using the restroom. If I was in the midst of menstruating and had to go number 2 I felt like my entire insides were falling out. It is hard to describe the pain but it didn’t feel good at all.
So month after month passed, I felt more terrible than I ever had before, and we weren’t getting pregnant. I decided to go to the fertility doctor in January 2020, but then we took a break when Covid hit. I found MM during Covid!
My headaches got worse, and so did other symptoms. I will get into my fertility journey and other symptoms later in this series! Look at the first post in the My Story Series to see the sequence of postings planned.
2020 Finding Medical Medium
In July of 2020, I found the Medical Medium, Antony William. He talks about the true cause of mystery symptoms and diseases and how to heal them.
Implementing his protocols has made my periods manageable and it also made my cycle last only 3 days as well! My first 1-2 days are still heavy flows, but nothing like what I dealt with in middle school.
I still have pain sometimes when I use the restroom, but for the most part, this has also improved. I also still have really bad cramps on the first day of my cycle, but the other days are usually more bearable. I noticed that if I drink alcohol or eat processed meats this pain ramps up.
Cleaning up my diet and detoxing has put me in touch with what my body needs and wants. I know that certain foods trigger symptoms and why this happens after reading all the MM info. I still struggle with this at times because when detoxing, you experience detox symptoms.
The symptoms are not directly caused by the healing foods. The healing foods provide the body with what it needs to start cleaning out the garbage which causes the pain. As the viruses and bacteria die, they ramp up one last time to try and get what they need. Also, their dead bodies are toxins that can cause pain as well.
For example, if strep bacteria is about to die, it will send signals to eat more dairy! Strep loves dairy. It’s not you craving the diary, it’s the strep! (That’s what I keep telling myself!)
Sometimes I have intense symptoms and I back off my healing a bit by eating some fat or something else to stop the process. Do what you can and have compassion for yourself as you are on this journey! If it is very painful, take some of the protocols away so you can ease into detoxing more gently!
I am still working on healing, but I want the world to know that it is possible to heal with food, supplements, and herbs! I also still see my doctor and take Advil during my cycle. I’m hoping one day I won’t even need to take Advil! But I’m still working on it:)
