Dear Medical Professional…
Why did it take five initial gynaecology visits for my symptoms to be listened to?
Why did I have to go private for someone to finally hear me and not fob me off?
My symptoms started at the age of 11, why was I misdiagnosed until 31?
Why did I have to get to stage four, with my organs sticking together with lesions before I was offered a diagnostic laparoscopy?
Was collapsing in pain and laying in a puddle of my own sick on many different occasions not enough for you to stop the gaslighting and telling me that I just had period pain? I’m a woman, so I’m just hormonal and erratic..right? How about when I told you that I was having to leave work early regularly due to stabbing pains and having to lay down in my car for an hour before I felt safe enough to drive home and you told me that I should go away and have a baby because it might clear me out and stop my “period pain”?
Why did I spend years seeking help whilst being told that I was causing it myself because i was “getting tense around my periods”?
Dear Medical ‘Professional’ …YOU were wrong.
It wasn’t just period pain, I didn’t grow out of it. My organs were sticking together with painful lesions, I had cysts the size of tennis balls and severe endometriosis that had spread and become stage four, deep infiltrating. You didn’t send me for the tests that I needed because it was ‘too expensive’ and cheaper for you to tell me that it was all in my head and now I have to pay for your failure in therapy to try to understand why my painful disease was just dismissed. A little research has shown me how under-researched Endometriosis is and that the treatment of this debilitating disease has not progressed in over four decades alongside the huge imbalance of research between mens and womens health. More research has gone into erectile dysfunction than has gone into womens health conditions. You can walk into a pharmacy and buy an erection, yet this condition which causes crippling pains on the same level as heart attacks and destroys women physically and mentally has absolutely no treatment options, no follow up care, just destruction of our organs and placed to the back of the queue because it doesn’t matter as much as making money from male sex organs needing to last a little longer.
What will it take?
Are lung collapses, bowel resections, sepsis, infertility, crippling pains..the list goes on.. not enough yet to make those who can stand up and say enough is enough?
Does anyone have the answer?
I said what I said.