I started my periods when I was 12. For a week before that I kept getting really bad stabbing and cramping pains in my tummy and was unable to go to the loo (which was very unpleasant and painful). I remember the day before they started very clearly because my family and I had gone out for sunday lunch. I was hungry but couldn't eat because I felt sick too and I kept needing to go to the toilet and not being able to go. I was scared but the sensible part of my brain realised I must be about to start my periods. Thank god I did think that because otherwise I'd have assumed I was seriously ill.
The pains stopped again until the next day when I went out shopping with my mum.
I was walking along when the dull aching started up again and I knew they were just going to get worse... I told my mum I needed the loo and that the pains were back. We went to the public toilets and I found I'd started my period... it was a shock at first but then just a relief because I new what my pains were.
Taking paracetamol took the edge off the pain and I sat and rested... my periods were always heavy and extremly painful for the first three days. My back always ached terribly when I got the cramps and if I started at school I had to be sent home. I'd look really pale and feel sick and faint (although I never have actually fainted).
I thought suffering like this with periods was normal so I thought nothing of it exept for feeling a little stupid having to have time off school for a few days every month when none of my friends had to. It made me feel like I must be weaker than them for not being able to cope with the pain, but unknown to me at that time, they probably didn't suffer from pain much, if at all.
I didn't even tell my friends I'd started until one of them said they had a few months later. They didn't understand why I hadn't mentioned it, but to me I saw it as an embarrassing problem... it obviously wasn't such a big deal to them.
Not long after I turned 14 I started to get really bad stabbing pains on my left side where my ovary was. They were so unbearable I thought I was dying. It felt like someone had hold of my insides and was squeezing and twisting them viciously. I couldn't stay still but moving hurt too, I broke out into sweats and couldn't sleep. I started missing even more time from school because I was either in pain or too tired from being awake all night with it.
My doctor sent me for a scan (like pregnant women have with the jelly on the tummy).
A cyst (growth) was found... my memory is quite vague of this now partly because it's a while back now but also because I had started to feel quite depressed by this point... I think the doctor who did the scan thought the cyst was on my bowel at the time but could tell it was benign (not cancerous).
But after studying the scan more carefully afterwards desided it was on my ovary and I was sent to see a gynaecologist (often referred to as a gynae) who would be doing an operation to remove the cyst.
I went into A&E a few times with the pain of the cyst, but I can't remember this as the pain made me feel really out of it.
After a few months since the pains started I finally had my surgery done. They cut a 5 and a half inch slit across my tummy on the bikini line. When they looked inside they found that my fallopian tube had twisted around itself very badly and that the cyst was in such a mess with my ovary that they couldn't simply cut the cyst out. I ended up losing the ovary and fallopian tube as well. My gynae came to explain to me how the operation had gone once I had come round properly, and he said they had found I have a deformed womb (called a bicornuate uterus), it's as if I have two wombs and as they took out the ovary from the bigger side of my womb I was told I'll have to have IVF treatment if I want kids ever.
When the results came through the post it said that the cyst had been endometriotic, otherwise known as a 'chocolate cyst'. This was how I was diagnosed. They decided to put me on a hormonal drug to stop my periods for 6 months and hopefully shrink the endo.
After having these injections I had fairly pain-free periods for just over a year, though I was still missing a lot of school because I was feeling depressed and stressed.
Unfortunately after I'd left school and gone to college to start my AS levels the pains came back quite badly so I decided to take a year off to just rest to hopefully avoid the stress of work making the pains worse. I had another scan to check I didn't have any more cysts and that was clear, so I was put on the pill for three months back to back (meaning taking three packets in a row without stopping to bleed for a week in between each pack). I went back to see my gynae because I was still getting abdominal pains whilst on the pill and the bleed I got after finishing the three packets was horrendous... my mum nearly took me to A&E and I ended up crawling to the bathroom! He was really helpful and gave me stronger pain killers for when it's really bad, he told me to keep taking the pill but 4 packets at a time now and is referring me to an endo specialist who will want to do a laparoscopy. He was also able to tell me my endo is probably caused by my funny womb causing retrograde bleeding (where it goes backwards up the fallopian tube instead of out of the body).
In early 2005 I went to see an endo specialist. He decided he wanted to carry out a laparoscopy and at the same time do a colonoscopy (where they put a camera up your bum to see into you bowel) and a hysteroscopy (where they put a camera up through the cervix to see into the womb.
I had the laparoscopy in May, no active endo was found which I was extremly pleased about. I did have adhesions though which could have been causing some of the pains I'd been getting, and they found that the left side of my split womb seemed almost completly closed off, hense the really bad period pain. They drained my womb and unstuck the adhesions and I've been feeling a lot better since. It does mean I may need more surgery to remove the closed off side of womb, but the new consultant I saw said that although he can't promise anything, he can't see why I couldn't get pregnant naturally with the side of my womb which isn't misbehaving!
I'm very pleased with the outcome of having the operation, I feel a lot more hopeful of the future and it was a relief to know that at least for now I'm endo free.
I know I'll never be able to completly forget about endo because the possibility is there that it will return, but now I know I can cope with it if that happens and I'm confident that my whole life won't be affected by it!