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Yep.. pretty much my body today. I am currently in between my hormone therapy due to insurance issues and let’s just say my body is completely wack right now!! It’s the most painful and annoying thing. 

Me: “ok I really need to be productive today!” My body:

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I am at a loss for words!

I really am, I have so many emotions running through my head right now, probably due to hormones and the fact that I am overwhelmed by the response of me sharing my endo story, and for participating in the Tone It Up 31-day challenge!! But in all honesty, I am so appreciative, and the comments on social media blew me away because, to be honest, I had no idea what to expect. 

Sharing my story, was something I really struggled with. It’s not easy to share such personal and raw thoughts and feelings, especially on such a taboo subject like women’s health. It’s not comfortable to share photos of your self to some 100 plus people while thinking these are the ugliest pictures of myself. As soon as I posted my insta, and wrote my blog posts, I had so many fears and anxieties overwhelming my mind yesterday. I thought, Omg what if no one cares? What if people don’t believe me? What if someone makes fun of me? What if someone thinks I am looking for attention or was exaggerating? I became so scared and second-guessed everything. But, I was immediately reminded of what my intention was and why I decided to be so honest and raw. 

It’s because of all of the other women who have inspired me to do so!! My girlfriends, who have their own health issues, and who reached out and let me know. It’s the women I was searching for, who reached out on social media by commenting or liking my post, sharing their experiences with endo, and inviting me into an online endo support team. It’s also the old friends who made my day, by saying hello and letting me know they believe in me and our rooting for me. It’s all of these positive, loving, and empowering women, they were my intention in doing all of this, to share my experience, and bring something good to the universe. Whether that was starting a conversation about women’s health, or it made someone google “endometriosis.” My intention has always been to be positive, genuine, and real. I am so grateful for the love and support, it could have gone all those bad ways and I could have seriously embarrassed myself, and maybe someone out there thinks I did, but whatever. I got bigger things to worry about. 

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#TIU31 Time To Make A Change

It’s been 5 months since my surgery, and I’ve gone through my first 3 month dose of hormone therapy. When my doctor first brought up the idea of total suppression. This means shutting down my entire reproduction system I didn’t think much of it. I thought okay, let's get rid of all this endo! I never want to be in pain again. How was I supposed to know what I was getting myself into?

Well, I was wrong, and not just wrong more like very naive. It didn’t start out slow for me, it immediately started impacting my life. I noticed I was becoming super paranoid. Stressed out for no reason, this was due to the hormonal changes that were beginning. Slowly all of the estrogen was leaving. Then I started getting painful burning, you guessed it down there.. and I am not talking mild burning like I thought my vagina was on fire and the only way to cool it down was yogurt. Yea you read that right, I won’t go into specifics. Then came the other physical changes. My skin started becoming saggy, and I started bloating all over. My stomach has been bloated for a while due to the inflammation of endo, but with the menopause, it got out of control. My stomach started becoming more and more sensitive, causing its own style of cramping. I could practically feel my ovaries shivering up inside me. 

It might seem so easy for me to lay it out on the table, but in reality, this was a nightmare, a mental one to be exact. I am 25 years old these are supposed to be my most fruitful, sexy, young feeling times of my life!! And here I am going through menopause, questioning what my fertility be like, will I ever feel good again, is this just my life now? Health issues galore! I started getting really depressed, and my self-confidence plummeted. I didn’t feel like a woman, because the core of what makes a woman is going into hibernation. After two months I said enough is enough. I need to take ownership of this. I need to educate myself and surround myself with beautiful, and strong women. Which led me to Tone It Up!

I spent the month of September, learning about endo, and what it was doing to my body. I learned that every woman’s story is different, and then I started realizing there aren’t a lot of stories out there. I was always an admirer of Tone It Up, I liked the concept but it was a lot of money to do the nutrition plan, pay for the app, and a commitment. I kept making excuses, until this great depression of mine. With the TIU 31 day challenge coming up I felt inspired to make a change. I decided to sign up for Tone It Up, and with it, I would start to share my own experience. I am here today declaring that I am flawed, but so is everyone it’s what we do with the weaknesses that make us stronger. I hope you get something out of me sharing, whether it’s looking out for your own health, being a little kinder to other women, whatever it may be, do something good. 

If you have endo or our a journey of your own, please feel free to share! 

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What In The Endo?

Earlier this year in March, I finally had my first appointment with the specialist. I was seeing a urogynecologist. Urogynecologist are specialists in urology and gynecology, and my specific doctor didn’t see pregnant women which I noticed was a huge difference compared to my other experiences with gynecologists.

It turns out that the suspected cyst on my ovary was believed to be an endometrial cyst, which is you guessed it, is due to endo. However, the only way to truly test for endo is by surgery. This is isn’t the first time endo has been brought up to me in a doctors office. This is just the first time that I had a doctor that cared about what that diagnosis meant for me. See in the past, I had plenty of other symptoms and pain, but a lot of doctors don’t know too much about endo, and because it takes surgery to diagnose not a lot of doctors can tell for sure if it’s endo. This was different though, by now the symptoms have gotten out of hand. 

It turned out that after a month my cyst was growing, and my doctor was confident at this point it was an endometrial cyst, which meant I had two options, it could continue to grow and then burst which would cause internal bleeding and toxins to spread, or it would continue to grow and form into cancer. I had one course of action available, and with that scheduled my surgery for May 7th. Prior to surgery, I was learning more about my diagnosis and what it meant. I started seeing a physical therapist for pelvic floor therapy and things started becoming clearer. 

On the day of surgery, I was nervous. No one knew what to expect other than we were going to be removing the cyst and seeing what the endo looked like. I said a prayer, kissed my family and went in for surgery. During the surgery, it was discovered that I had endo spread through my entire torso. It was on my intestines, bowels, bladder, uterus, ovaries, and even my appendix. I wound up having my appendix removed. My doctor was able to scrape and clean most of my organs, unfortunately, the endo was pretty wrapped up in my intestine and my doctor couldn’t clean them, as it would require them to remove my lower intestine. 

The recovery afterward was a bitch, to say the least. For me, the recovery took about 8 weeks to be back to a somewhat normal routine. After surgery, I was confirmed and I was diagnosed with stage IV endo. I also started a 1-year treatment plan of forced menopause which meant a complete shut down of my reproductive system. Life hasn’t been the same since surgery, and my treatment plan has brought forth it’s own struggles. 

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Pre Lap Surgery- May 7th 2018 

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A little background to the story..

About a year ago (2017) I started noticing significant changes to my health. I thought a lot of my symptoms were due to stress, unhappiness and a feeling of uneasiness about my personal life.

It started with extreme stomach pains, that would leave me in the fetal position, heartburn, sea-sick like nausea, and a yo-yoing appetite of not being hungry, to over-eating from lack of nutrition. I started seeing a primary care physician who ran numerous blood tests, from digestive to psychological tests, but everything came back inconclusive.

Then the constant urinary tract infections started happening. Every other week I was noticing UTI symptoms, that would cause me so much pain and made everyday life so uncomfortable. I had to have Azo on me at all times because I never knew when the UTI symptoms were going to pop up. I would go to the doctor and get an antibiotic, and things would be fine for a week or two and then like clockwork it would start up again. I started noticing a trend that I was getting UTIs either a couple of days before or after my period.

Around January of 2018, I got a bad UTI! I had a high fever and the pain was so unbearable. I went to the doctor and by this time it had been 3-4 months of constant UTIs. Right away, my doctor ordered an ultrasound of my kidneys and bladder. During the imaging in the corner of an image on my kidney, was a dark mass on the left ovary. From there, the primary care doctor recommended I see a specialist.

If it weren’t for my doctor ordering those images I don't know how much longer I would have had to put up with suffering.  Many of my symptoms started in middle school and worsened throughout high school and college. The excruciating lower back pain. The agonizing cramps that would leave me bedridden, and face in the toilet. How painful sex became as I got older, and the emotional roller coaster I could never quite understand or tame. Everything, all of the pain and issues we’re due to endometriosis. Finally, I was on a path of understanding but up against a lot of information with little time to digest.