'I have endometriosis just like Molly-Mae and this is how I’ve learnt to live with the pain'
29.03.2022 - 17:19
/ ok.co.uk
In Molly-Mae Hague's recent YouTube Q&A video, the most frequently asked question was: “What is Endometriosis?” I too asked this question in 2011, when I was diagnosed. Before that moment, endometriosis (pronounced en-doh-mee-tree-oh-sis) was something I’d never really heard of, but after nearly a decade of chronic pain, fatigue and lack of energy, painful intercourse, excessive bleeding, along with bowel and bladder problems, I finally plucked up the courage to speak to my GP.That’s when I received the diagnosis.
At the time I was 24 and starting my career in London, and hundreds of miles away from my family. I had always experienced painful and heavy periods, but so did my older sister and Mum, so that was normal right? I’d often have to come home early from school with period pain, and I frequently would have to call in sick if my period fell on the weekend days when I had a job.
Once intercourse became painful, I knew deep down something wasn’t right; it felt harder to ignore my symptoms as part of normal life. Surely all women didn’t suffer like this every month, so was I weak for not being able to manage I’d ask myself? Sex was meant to be pleasurable, not painful, but I felt too embarrassed to speak up.
After several attempts to raise my concerns with various GPs, by chance I saw a female junior doctor who took me and my symptoms seriously. By this point I was suffering from heavy clotting and bleeding, so much so that I would bleed through pads and clothing.That came along with severe cramps.
I’d always be fearful of starting to bleed at any time, making me tense and anxious. When I began to work full-time, the daily pain was so chronic that I had to adopt a system of where if I could manage to stand up straight,
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