05/03/2025
It’s endometriosis awareness month. For a disease that impacts 10% of those assigned female at birth, it is spoken about far too little.
There is a very good chance that at least a few people you come into contact with today suffer from endometriosis.
I have spent 10 years of my career working with women and helping them manage their endometriosis. Little did I know that I would become 1 in 10 too.
After our first miscarriage and then 13 months of no luck trying to conceive, I decided I would have a laparoscopy to look for possible issues.
With very few symptoms I really didn’t think my surgeon would find endometriosis. Well I was wrong.
Waking up to the diagnosis of adenomyosis and stage 3 endometriosis was a bit of a shock. My only symptoms were slightly long bleeding, and on and off nerve pain in my legs, and I guess infertility. You would think that as someone with so much knowledge of the disease I would have been less shocked.
The point is that endometriosis can present in a multitude of ways. Painful periods is just the tip of the iceberg, endo can cause gut and bladder issues, leg pain, infertility, fatigue, abnormal bleeding, pain, brain fog, painful s*x and more.
In NZ it takes almost 10 years to get diagnosed, which is ridiculous. If you have female anatomy and present with any endo symptoms then the diagnosis should be on the table from the get go.
The more people speak about it the more those struggling can get the help they need. 💛
