Advise for endometriosis suspect..

[Squiggles23]

Hi all, I guess I’m just looking for some wisdom and to know what others would be in my situation.

I suspect I might have endometriosis due to the symptoms:

• pain when having sex especially in positions like doggy
• Heavy periods (soak through tampons and having to deal with a complete blood bath if I haven’t changed it in time
• severe bloating, to the point I look pregnant
• I sometimes feel very bad pain when I poo especially around start of period

I don’t really have other pain. I get period pain but no worse than when I was younger (before other symptoms started). I thought this meant I didn’t have endo but a doctor told me it doesn’t necessarily correlate.

I am getting married in 3.5 months and the bloating is really getting me down.

The pain during sex also causes issues with our sex life but as myself and partner are both on medication (sertraline) we both have a low sex drive.

I don’t know whether to ask for a lacroscopy or not. If I do will it be too invasive to have pre wedding? I’m guessing with nhs wait it would maybe be after anyway but perhaps I could have it sooner with private medical insurance.

Any other ideas to help with endo belly?

Hopeful bump..!

Hi there! NHS would be at least a year, so no worries there. Private - I'd want to look very carefully at the prices. I did actually look at private (no medical insurance) and one of the issues is that they have no idea what they'll find until they go in there. So you can't really gauge the full price of fixing the issue until you're financially committed already.

I took 1 week off work, but was feeling ropey for a few weeks - it's called a minor operation, but they're still cutting multiple holes in you and I was surprised how much it took out of me. Too much pain to sleep for the first night, spent a few days on the sofa, couldn't lift for a while etc.

Tbh, I wouldn't do it just before a wedding - but it would probably make sense to start the NHS route now, and then by the time you've caught your breath from the wedding you're a few months into the drip-feed of appointments before they'll operate. Then you can get a sense of your NHS trust speed and whether it's worth trying to go private.

I would get the ball rolling with the NHS asap but don’t expect anything to happen before the wedding.

After years of back and forth to the GP I was finally referred for ultrasound/MRI and to gynae. From seeing GP to seeing gynae consultant was relatively quick (about 4 months) but for a lap on the NHS I’d be waiting about 2 years. I chose to go privately with Spire Edinburgh and had a great experience. It was about £4500 (October 2023) and I was lucky because the consultant was able to use my NHS scans rather than redoing them.

In terms of recovery, I had removal of 2 endometrioma and excision of stage 4 endo and was initially signed off by the private consultant for 4 weeks. I extended it to 6 weeks but could have done with 8 - I was so tired!! I didn’t feel fully myself again until about 6 months post op.

I also had a mirena coil fitted during the lap which has totally changed my life, I can’t recommend it enough!