I think I have endometriosis

[Lissy23]

Posting here for traffic.

I didn’t struggle to conceive my son naturally, it happened after about 6 months of ‘trying’ although we weren’t charting or anything like that really. Before I had him my periods were bad, heavy bleeding, clots and lots of pain. When I was pregnant it was amazing, I had virtually no pain and a textbook pregnancy. I breastfed him for a year and although my periods did return after a few months post partum, I still didn’t have much pain.
Fast forward to now, he’s 2 years and 4 months old and my periods are horrific again, I get pain about 8 days before I’m due to start and the pain continues in intensity on and off until I bleed. Then I have horrific pain for a day and heavy bleeding after that...I get pains during ovulation but they’re not too bad , I can manage with them. I basically only have about a week each month that I’m not in pain, surely that’s not normal?

My moods are really bad with it too, about a week before I become angry, volatile, emotional, tearful, I push people away, occasionally I even become suicidal.
It’s hell.

I get a horrible pain in my bum about a week before I start and also during my period. Like a sudden stabbing pain and if I try and open my bowels it’s so painful.

I hate living like this. The only saving grace is that I’ve discovered the menstrual cup, I use a pixie cup every month and it’s made getting out and about in my period easier, as I am prone to flooding and big clots. I also end up feeling dizzy and nauseous during actual AF. Especially if I’m passing clots (sorry if tmi) I get palpitations on the first and second day too.

Is anyone similar? And can anyone offer advice?

Have you spoken to your GP? Even if it turns out not to be Endometriosis they can offer things to help.

GP for a diagnosis for sure. I ended up going private for internal scans in the end.
As an endo and PCOS sufferer, reducing the amount of sugar I consume helps with my hormone management, and has a positive effect on my symptoms.

The only way to diagnose for sure is by surgery.

I have endo and have had a couple of surgeries to remove it.

Have you had your iron levels checked since you had your child ?

Wow OP that’s not normal. Do see your GP, and take an A4 sheet of bullet points with dates and a word or two describing symptoms on each date: you need to be clear this isn’t just ‘period pain’.

A warning: the NHS (and UK generally) is very bad at gynaecology. If you can afford it I’d strongly recommend you have some investigations done by a private gynaecologist who may suggest things that the NHS won’t fund (and thus won’t even tell you are options). The NHS spent years doing cheap ultrasound scans and telling me nothing was wrong with me. Private laparoscopy found a lot of stuff that needed fixing.

It does sound a lot like endometriosis- the average time it takes NHS to diagnose that is TEN years. It could also be internal scar tissue, some lingering infection, PCOS or many other things. Only a laparoscopy/hysteroscopy will really get to the bottom of it and I would push for that whether private or on NHS.

Good luck I hope you get the help you need xxx

Thanks for the replies.

One other thing is that I had a c section with my son, I thought they would have seen scar tissue when they cut me open if it was Endo, but it wasn’t mentioned.

I can’t afford to go private and it’s hell trying to get an appointment with the GP at the moment , due to covid I expect.