-Be in excruciating pain for years. This is an understatement. Your insides are twisting, the pain and pressure in your pelvis is that of hot burning sauna stones and they are searing through your lower back. The bathroom is only a place to cry or dry heave. You probably can’t put a tampon in. You cannot get out of bed without falling over. Your joints are that of an arthritic 99 year old woman. You sleep 16 hours a day.
-Have everyone tell you that it’s mental illness. That you’re depressed (well, yes, I am) and that you really need to get it together! (Well, yes, I do)
-Go to the psychiatrist, they will shrug.
You’re getting sicker by the minute, the clock is ticking, the diagnoses infinite.
-Go to the doctor, they will shrug.
-Go to the OB/GYN, they will shrug.
-Go to the GI, they will shrug.
You will spend years cycling antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and birth controls, like they’re fucking gumdrops and mentos.
-Go to the doctor, get labs run, have them shrug again
-Go to the OB/GYN, get labs run, have them shrug again
-Go to another. And another. And another.
-Cry. Scream. Act a fool.
-Be manhandled by an ultrasound tech who does not want to be on shift today or any day ever. Try to be quiet as she jams your ovaries with a plastic stick with a camera inside. If you cry too much, they’ll just be more aggressive, so please just play nice.
-They’ll find a bunch of stuff on the imaging and print it and circle it but they’ll tell you you’re fine.
-Go back. Turn the record over and repeat.
-Cry, act a fool, louder this time!
Be manhandled by an ultrasound tech who does not want to be on shift today or any day ever. Don’t tell her you’re very sensitive to these as you have trauma of your own and the last one wasn’t as nice. This will only aggravate her and she will become as aggressive as the last. You will cry because it hurts too bad. You cannot hide the shame and you cannot fight.
They’ll circle the same things tell you there’s some fibroids and a load of cysts but they’re too small to go in, it would just be too much trouble to deal with.
You will spent the next year or so in routine appointment checkups just trying to let them know that you’re still as miserable as before, even though they have no answer for you. One of the labs comes up and they realize that along with all the things they’ve been circling that you have PCOS. What is the treatment for it? Well since you are in a normal weight range, nothing.
OK, well, what’s next? “Well, it could be endometriosis, but it’s a real whole deal. You have to do a surgery to diagnose and do you really want that?” That’s what they’ll ask you. They’ll try to make it seem like it really isn’t worth the whole deal. You beg, you plead, “Help me!” They’ll say take this birth control.
-You go home and you don’t.
So then what you do is you wait a whole year. Don’t you dare take that fucking birth control. That shit is a trap. I’ll be very clear. You back in after some time and say “Well, I’ve only bled three times this year. I didn’t want to take the birth control because my body has been out of control and I need some sense of control and this is the only way I know.” They’ll say “Ok now I see something is wrong. Actually, let’s do the surgery. This confirms to me that you probably do have endo and it’ll open up a myriad of possibilities. There’s so many treatment options of the diagnosis so keep your hopes up. Don’t lose focus.”
So then what you do is you get a surgery. It fucking hurts and they say it might do something. But then what will happen is it will come back. And your so-called glorified treatment options are pill induced menopause or more birth control which didn’t work before the fact. The reason they push so hard to not diagnose is because it means nothing and now you’re stuck in this pose. Fetal position, heating pad searing and cooking your stomach, like a cheap flank of steak. Nine months out from surgery and you’re back to dying. They said you could have 3 to 5 years. One year, worst case. Yet it took 3 months to come back with a burning pace. You go to the ER and they spit in your face for 30k. You have three weeks for the specialist and you hope she gives you some relief. Fuck it, you don’t even care, let ‘em scoop out your ovaries. Ask ‘em to take you out back and kill you humanely.
But those are your options if you’re sick like me. If you want to get diagnosed with endometriosis, it’s the fight of your life and honestly it’s not worth it.
I wish I could end this with a call to action. Our world is so fucked right now that universities can’t even study anything with the word woman in it. Even before that, no one gave a fuck about endometriosis. I don’t mean to be rude to those who do care. But what are we supposed to do? When people are pulling their teeth out and cutting their limbs off and taking their own lives just to get some fucking reprieve. What do we do? How do I stop this feeling? Where can I find hope when I cannot light a candle? I’m losing the battle, they might be right, this might be mental.
endoreality 
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