Painful Periods....So What?

I can fully remember my first period. I was 10 years old on a plane coming home from my grandfather's funeral. The day of I was crouched in a pain I had never felt before, and my mom had told me to suck it up it was the last day with family. So I did even though I wanted to throw up from the pain. Low and behold, there it was my first period.

Please just come on the weekend

For years, I remember praying and hoping that my period would come during the weekend so I wouldn't have to pretend to be ok at school. As I got older I realized that I can deal with one day of massive pain and then go on about my life.

I was in a swimming pool accident where a friend and I were messing around and my neck got twisted and I ended up at Urgent Care and they gave me a muscle relaxer, I had coincidentally started my period that same day and the muscle relaxer was a dream! However, my mom took that away quickly in fear I would become addicted. So again, I figured out how to manage the pain and just live with it.

What really tipped me off that something wasn't right

Flash forward a few years, I thought I was having a miscarriage with how much blood I was losing and the pain I was in after teaching some swim lessons and a kid accidentally kicked me in the stomach, that is when I went to Planned Parenthood and they helped me as much as they could but as an adult with no health insurance, they could not do much without having to send me to a specialist. That is when I first KNEW something was definitely not right.
Again, flash forward a few more years, I was again teaching swim lessons and I was in so much pain and came home to throw up from the pain, I went to a new gynecologist who suggested that it was because my blood sugar was high and I needed to cut out the carbs and sugar. After almost to the day of doing that I had a very similar episode, this time I was at work throwing up on the bathroom floor.

This doctor changed everything

Found a new gynecologist who immediately scheduled my ultrasound, who then saw something they didn't like and then scheduled my MRI to then schedule my laparoscopic surgery. Once I was able to get a dr that was amazing and listened to me, the ball went rolling very fast. I am forever grateful for this Dr.

Even the doctor was amazed

She, unfortunately, could not get all the endometriosis out, it had fused my left ovary to my uterus and then my uterus to my rectum, stage 4. She was actually amazed by how functioning of a human I was with all this in my body and the pain that I was going through. She then recommended an endo specialist in town and I was scheduled pretty quickly.
Through the surgeries, pelvic floor physical therapy, and different herbs, I have been able to manage my pain on a regular basis now and am an advocate for all women who feel they are not being heard by their Dr's.