Endo

It's national Endometriosis month.  My guess is most people have no clue what Endometriosis is and rightly so.  It's not a visible ailment and it involves periods, which isn't a common dinner table topic. Well, at most dinner tables it's not.  It's fair game over here.  Endo, my pet name for the disease, has shaped our world in a sense.  It has dictated my fertility, my emotions, the medication I take, my intestinal health, the doctors I see...it's a boss of sorts.  A pain in the ass boss.  We all have a boss though, right? Very few of us walk through life without some internal foreigner dictating a portion of their world.  Some might seem easier to manage than others, but we all struggle with uninvited guests.  Mine is Endo and I would like to take this opportunity to recognize her for exactly what she is.  A disgusting, bloody invader who is so ingrained in who I am that I can't imagine life without her. Some days I deeply appreciate her dwelling in me and consider her a blessing, and others I want to void her existence outright.  She stays dormant quite often and then decides to have a disco dance party inside of my organs.  She's unpredictable and bi-polar most often.

If you're interested in learning exactly what Endometriosis is, feel free to click HERE to get enlightened.  It aint pretty, but it's definitely interesting.  Without going into a lot of detail, endo occurs when blood escapes surrounding your organs instead of flowing out as it should.  This causes an assortment of little gems, depending on where those growths decide to park.  For me, they've landed on my urinary tract, causing UTI's, on my Fallopian tubes, causing a blockade for Tim's swimmers to get through, on my appendix, causing acute appendicitis, on my upper intestines, causing pretty much a lifetime of intestinal struggles and inconsistencies....you get the picture.  None of this is life threatening - it's extremely rare that these growths are cancerous - it's just a giant pain in the arse and involves a lot of symptom management.  And of course there's the fertility piece.  That's a big one, but I've worked through that piece and I have my beautiful monkeys.  Thus the blessing aspect of my Endo.

1 in 10 women struggle with Endo and many have no idea it exists in them.  Unless you go under the knife, there's not way to diagnose it.  And for many women, they assume the pain and discomfort they feel is a typical reaction to having a period.  It's not like any of us want to climb 14ers when Flicka arrives - it's generally a gloomy couple of days.  Unless you're trying to get pregnant and are having a hard time or there's a family history (which there was in my case), docs won't always think to scope your insides for a cause.  Luckily for me they did and two surgeries later, I know exactly what goes on inside of my jacked up body.  A lot of disco dancing.

The latest in my world of Endo management is a new found discovery of a nodule in my upper intestine, which my new and detailed doctor discovered studying my charts.  Apparently my last doc didn't clue me into just how much disease he found on my intestines and IN my intestines.  He notes how he brought a general surgeon in to consult on these findings and they decided that it wasn't worth operating on back then but might become more of an issue in time.  I had no idea.  He just told me I was stage 4 and called it a day.  Thanks Doc.  This is quite enlightening to my daily intensifying struggle to maintain a healthy intestinal life.  It puts it all in a shiny new light and makes me feel less crazy.  But now what?  Well, we start with a GI specialist who can guide us down the path of determining what exactly this little nodule (it's a cute word isn't it?) is and if it's worth doing anything about.  The growths outside the intestinal walls aren't likely to be dealt with as excising them could perforate holes in my walls, forcing me to live with a colostomy bag.  NO THANK YOU.  We'll let them continue dancing as these see fit.

In addition to the GI doc, we're going to mimic menopause yet again and inject drugs into my backside in at attempt to stop the dance party and put those growths to sleep.  Luckily for Tim, they now accessorize the menopausal hormones with a drug that will hopefully keep the hot flashes and mood swings at bay.  This magic pill didn't exist the first time I went through this treatment, which was a real treat for my college counterparts and my new found boyfriend, Tim.  Hot flashing in the middle of a Michigan winter was a conflict for my 19 year old self.  Not something you can explain away easily to your classmates as you drip sweat all over your desk and break out in tears when your pen runs out of ink.  We're super excited about going through this circus again.

Every case of Endo looks and feels unique.  Some women are in so much pain they do a complete hysterectomy at very young ages, which isn't an option I'm willing to consider at this point.  I fear the emotional ramifications of that choice and can't put my husband through more emotional torture than I already inflict on him in my uterus baring state.  Some women grow tumors the size of footballs that need to be surgically removed.  I know a few of those women.  Most of us just deal and handle the internal dance parties in our own ways and manage the symptoms best we can with a little help from our doctor friends.  I'm grateful I just found a doctor who cares enough about my health and not just trying to get me pregnant to take me on.  That's not easy to find unfortunately.  Baby making is a lucrative business.  Maintaining women's overall health isn't.  Thank God for docs who care more about the latter.

I think that's all I have for today on this subject.  I had to give Endo it's spotlight this month and I promise not to talk about it again until next year.  Happy weekend.      

                A powerful clip on topic...