Should I have a laparoscopy?

[Angeleyes15]

Hi,

Just wanted to hear people’s opinions on my dilemma. Me and my partner have been ttc 2nd child for 6 months now, 39, have an under active thyroid that is never under control, currently hyper, but have my meds adjusted for this. I have just been privately diagnosed with endo via MRI, which is stage 1/2 but MRI doesn’t detect deep endo. I don’t have much pain, just some spotting and recently one of my periods was 23 days, with 10 days spotting which is short for me (normally 26/27 cycle). All in all I am very regular and think I ovulate due to ewcm.

i have been offered a laporoscopy, but for the lack of pain I declined. But I am worried about fertility. Do you think it’s worth having one to see if it’s hindering/ could improve my fertility?

opinions appreciated.

100% yes. Endo is a progressive disease so without a lap to properly assess how bad it is and where it is located then there is no way of knowing how it will affect you in the future.

I had stage 4 endometriosis which had deeply infiltrated my bowel, peritoneum, uterosacral ligaments and loads of other places. It was only superficially on my ovaries at the time and my tubes were unaffected. I had always had heavy, painful periods but my only chronic pain symptom was that I had a localised right sided pain which never went away. I had the lap and all of the endo was removed. I needed to have the endo on my bowel shaved down. Basically my surgeon said if I had left it it would have continued to infiltrate my bowel which would have eventually led to me needing to have parts of my bowel removed and I would have needed a stoma. I also had an endometriosis nodule stuck to one of my ureters and if this wasn't removed it could have infiltrated the ureter causing kidney and bladder issues. My fertility was luckily unaffected as I only had superficial endometriosis on the ovaries which was removed but the ovaries were able to be saved. If the endo had got worse on them and deeply infiltrated them or caused an endometrioma then I may have lost one or both of the ovaries.

I had my surgery in June 2022 and I am currently 12 weeks pregnant. I was able to get pregnant easily after only 1 month of trying and I think my endo surgery positively contributed to my fertility.

Some women can have widespread deep endometriosis but not much pain because if the endo isn't located near any nerves then you won't feel pain. There is no knowing how much damage it is doing to your body though if it is undetected.

Having my surgery was one of the best things I did and even though it was tough at the time I'm so glad I did it.

I'm assuming you'd be having a diagnostic lap rather than excision as well so that won't be as invasive as full excision surgery. It may be that they decide to treat your endo conservatively at first depending on where it is but until they do a lap and know for sure where it is located then it will be impossible to know fully how bad it is.

I would if your ttc. Wish u all the best xx