The road to relief from endometriosis and its related pain can be long and confusing. Listen to a patients journey over a decade period finding bringing her to a position of comfort. Endometriosis pain can manifest in many different ways, one being chronic pelvic pain and numerous other associated conditions.
My pain started even before, like, my menstrual cycle, so I was very young. At, like, 13, I had this, like, weird pain. And I remember my dad brought me to, like, the store before soccer practice, and he was like, “Get some Icy Hot. Maybe you tore a muscle.” And then once I had my menstrual cycle, it kinda evened out, but I was just, like, bedridden during my periods and everything. And I just thought that was normal. My mom said that she had bad periods, so I kinda just dealt with it.
And then I dropped to the floor one day because I had really sharp pain. I had, like, a cyst on my ovary that was the size of a grapefruit. So I had to have surgery for that, and they questioned endometriosis then. I didn’t know what endometriosis was. I was young still. I thought I would get better after the surgery just for the cyst. And then it would just get, like, worse and worse as the years went by.
So I had a partial hysterectomy when I was 17 or 18. No one should have to have a hysterectomy at 17, and that’s the whole reason why my endometriosis was never excised properly. And it’s common for it to resurface the worst ever after a hysterectomy. You get a few good years, amazing years, but then it comes back, and it hits you just like a tsunami, nothing like I ever felt before.
When I was in law school, I started bringing my heating pad to lectures, and I was, like, losing the battle. And that was the first time I had to, like, put my hands up. And I had to leave school, and couldn’t work, couldn’t even go to the store. I couldn’t eat. I was throwing up from the pain. That was the first time where I felt like, “This is the end.” I was like, “Is this gonna be the rest of my life?” And I was so, like, driven and stayed in school, so then people couldn’t understand socially, like, “Why can’t you just get better? You’ve had surgery.” You know? But they don’t understand, you know?
Some doctors feel like they’ve done all they can do, and they think that you don’t have it anymore. And he told me it was impossible that I had any endo again, and that’s a common theme. You’ll hear that a lot from specialists. I met Dr. Shrikhande through a mutual friend. She was wonderful and kind and warm. And this field is so dominated with males, and it was just so nice to have females to come to, and it was just a different atmosphere. The injections that she did, like, doing it how she did it and following her plan, finally, now, I’m feeling like my old self. So I call it “my flare of a lifetime.”
I feel like everything that occurred and happened to me was just creating, like, “the perfect storm” I like to call it. Even my family members were saying my personality was coming back. I was feeling better because the pain wasn’t at the forefront of my mind all the time. There’s no cure, and I’ll always have issues with the pelvic floor, but that’s why you see a specialist like Dr. Shrikhande.
She makes something that can be very awkward not awkward at all. She’s just very bright and warm, and no matter what state you come in seeing her, you leave feeling happy. And she’s very nurturing, and she makes you feel like it’s gonna be okay. She’s inspired me and has inspired me in how much she’s helped me. I wanna be able to help someone like that because I know what it feels like, and I wanna be able to help change someone’s life. She definitely gave me something back that I lost, and I’m so grateful for it, and I just can’t wait to see what the future holds.
So I’m excited for all the people that are going to benefit from this and feel like me and feel like they’re getting control back over their bodies and their life and have a say in it again. So yeah. I can’t put it into words. I love her, and the whole office is amazing.