A YEAR.

It’s not long surpassed a year since the endometriosis excision surgery. That year has been a whirlwind of emotions and self-gaslighting (or maybe I don't heal well at all).

April 6 2022, I had a very chaotic surgery reschedule and I finally had the surgery to remove endometriosis from various areas. This meant that I had several incision points, on top and around previous incision points from other surgeries. I knew going in that the surgery had a 70% succession rate, as in patients notice a reduced amount of pain or any pain at all, and I kept holding on to that hope until recently.

Every few months I would keep telling myself, ‘my body is still healing,’ and I would believe it every time I kept saying that to myself. Once it got to ten months post-surgery, I would repeat ‘my body is still healing’ until it became a ridiculously stupid sentence and was then just something for me to laugh at. Ten months. I really was telling myself that over and over until then. At this point, I’m uncertain if I even noticed a difference because of so many issues coming up. The stress of having my cervical screening for the third year in a row has made me feel more on edge about my health. The several months of not knowing if my coil had actually made its way into my uterus wall (8 months for an ultrasound to find it). Then the bloating and flare-ups gradually getting worse again. The same pain on my left side that feels like things are popping internally and being stabbed simultaneously (that’s the best way I can describe the pain).

Now I’m just stuck in frozen and scared. I’m frozen and scared because I have to bring myself to start the whole process again. That means seeing new doctors after already seeing so many before being taken seriously, only for that seriousness to be taken away from me because I am ‘not in a hurry to have kids’ because apparently that’s the only reason they will help your health further…to benefit someone else’s life. Then cervical screening stress, like I hadn’t already spent years trying to have my gynaecological health looked at. I also don’t think I can handle any more of questions about my mental health instead of looking at the things I am concerned about.

It really is fight or flight and I am just stuck in-between.

Damaged polaroid self-portrait.