Day 2: Let's start at the very beginning
Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with ABC
When you sing you begin with Do-Re-Mi...
And when you talk about endometriosis, you start with "Periods". I first heard the term during hushed conversations at school back when kids thought talking about 'adult stuff' was cool, and girls couldn't wait to turn into women 🙄. I remember initially ignoring the talks thinking it was some made up hogwash until I got the 'period talk' - a rather short and awkward one - from my grandmother after which I had no choice but to believe it. Since that day I waited nervously till that wave of red came crashing down on me. Luckily (or should I say unfortunately for me) I didn't have to wait much longer for the onset of what would go on to be the cause of 99% of my problems in life.
Thanks to my heredity, I have almost always been anemic. So to my doctors it felt like the logical reason for irregular periods. Also during the months when I finally did get my periods, they lasted for 2 long weeks when I had to endure heavy bleeding. Due to these reasons I was put on iron supplements. Gradually I started getting periods more frequently, even if not on a 28-day cycle. But they were always the same - lasting at least 2 weeks, heavy flow for over a week, crippling pain that starts a few days before the periods began and ended a few days after it stopped, and diarrhea for the first couple of days. Sometimes I would feel giddy and faint, other times I would end up vomiting. They were beyond my worst nightmares.
In times like these, what made things worse was the fact that people around me couldn't understand what I was going through - not friends, not family, not doctors. My friends thought I was being over-dramatic when I refused to move around, while most others where perfectly capable of indulging in activities like dance and sports while on their periods. On days I lay on the bed curling up like a fetus pressing the pillow to my stomach and crying my eyes out while I refused to go to school, my family thought I was making up excuses to just stay home. And when I begged them to understand that the pain was unbearable and that they should take me to a doctor, for the very first time in my life I understood what the term 'medical gaslighting' meant (This is a topic for another day, so let's leave it here for now). To this day I remember how I was always told "To lead life as a woman, you should learn to put up with pain and shed some tears"!!
Looking back I can now see how the once cheerful and energetic child started turning into a troubled teenager because of the toll this condition took on her physical and mental health. I couldn't enjoy life the way I used to any longer - I had to plan events, activities and vacations around my irregular periods, I couldn't engage in activities like dance which I loved from the bottom of my heart, and I didn't know how to make any of it better. Little did I know back then that I would continue to live life like that for more than a decade just because people refused to believe that painful periods aren't normal.
If you or someone you know is experiencing painful periods that may or may not be accompanied by other symptoms, seek medical help. And if the doctor dismisses you, seek out a different doctor. And no matter what people say, remember this:
Periods are normal. But killer cramps are not.
#EndoTheStigma
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