First appointment with a gynaecologist

When I was a teenager I would have periods that would be so painful that would require prescribed pain medications then I started on the pill and these disappeared.

However I started getting other symptoms such as pain during intercourse and bleeding (not all the time). Regular fatigue, bloating, cystitis, ect.. I put these to back of my mind as normal or imaging them. Until a few years ago when I came off the pill (due to the many side effects).

My periods were nowhere near as painful as they had been when I was a teenager however I quickly discovered than when I would go running. I would start getting heavy legs and pelvic pain which would radiate down my legs, would calm down after a while.

In the last couple of years these have become a lot worse to the point of throwing up and feeling nauseous. Last year I decided to get an ultrascan and nothing came up. I had to fight to get a referral to a gynaecologist which I cancelled because I chickened out and decided that it was easier to ignore the pain.

Prior to that I also had blood works done to see why I was getting cystitis so regularly once again I was told that I was basically imaging it.

Last month I made the mistake of going for a run during ovulation and as soon as I could feel my legs going heavy I knew what was coming on. At this point I decided to get another appointment and start recording my symptoms thorough the month and realised that for at least half of my cycle I had some kind of symptom (fatigue, bloating, painful ovaries,ect..) and this really made me feel low.

My appointment with a gynaecologist is this week, part of me is afraid of once again of being dismissed and scared that this is all in my head or that these are normal symptoms that a lot of woman experience. My symptoms are not as bad as a lot of these stories so if it wasn't for my husband I would have cancelled the appointment and ignored it.