What is Endometriosis?

A lot of people don't know what Endometriosis actually is and so I decided to do a post specifically about it. WEBMD defines Endometriosis as tissue that is normally found in the uterus growing on other parts of the body. These areas could be your ovaries, Fallopian tubes, bowel, or other internal parts. When our hormones change during our cycle the tissue breaks down and may cause pain.

Some of the symptoms I had that made me suspicious that I had Endometriosis were extremely painful periods. I'm talking pain so bad I cannot function. Most of the time I get extremely dizzy, nauseous, and most of the time I puke more than once due to pain. I dont just get cramps while on my period, I usually have some sort of cramping everyday, nothing near as bad as while on my period (thank goodness!) but small cramps that I wish were my period cramps! Another symptom I had was that I noticed that I was tired, all of the time! There were months where I was just so exhausted that I thought that I might be pregnant because we all know that is a sign. I never was and when I was diagnosed and doing research I discovered this was a big symptom.

Some of you may be wondering what may be the cause of endometriosis? Where does it come from? Or why do people get it? There are a few theories as to why. It could be hereditary which makes sense in my case. My grandma was diagnosed with it when she first got married and was told she may never have kids. Well she went on to have 7 kids and she would have had more but after giving birth to her 7th they immediately took her in and removed everything because of how bad her endometriosis had gotten. Another theory is that Doctors think that it's possible that menstrual blood containing endometrial tissue flows back into the tubes and into the pelvic cavity and continues to bleed and grow.

In order to help with pain I was prescribed a heavy pain medication. This worked for the first couple of months but now I it doesn't work as well and I am beginning to feel the pain again. Another way they treat endometriosis is by putting women on birth control which controls the hormones that cause endometriosis. This was not an option for me since we are trying to have children. Another way is surgery. Where they go in laparoscopically and remove the endometriosis. This is not a long term solution and usually the endometriosis will begin to grow back in 3 months to a year :(

Although it may be more difficult for my husband and I to get pregnant due to me having endometriosis, other women may have no trouble and get pregnant on their own. Some women could also have endometriosis and never have symptoms.

I hope this post was helpful!! :) check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new blog posts! :)