Endometriosis Surgery
Today I am here to talk to you yet again about the thing that plagues my every moment: endometriosis (endo). This is something I have talked a lot about on this blog, on my Instagram, and my YouTube channel, but I have new development to share with all of you: I am finally getting excision surgery! To those who don’t know, an excision is any surgery where a surgeon takes something out. So in my case, that will be a surgeon going into my abdomen and cleaning out all of the endo spots that they can safely. I have them all around my reproductive organs, up on my bladder, bowels, and a few on my intestines. While they are in there, they will also be testing my uterus for adenomyosis. This is another issue my doctor thinks I have that contributes to all of my endo pain and maybe is the reason for some of the unexplained pain I have suffered up to this point.
Adenomyosis is when the endometrial tissue that the body sheds (or in my case holds on to) grows into the walls of the uterus and begins to make the organ less spongy and porous and much harder and tougher. This means that my body is shedding the lining even less than it already does with the endometriosis, and can be part of the reason I have so many issues. Like with endo, the only way to diagnose it is with surgery since it cannot be seen via ultrasound or MRI. But it can’t be definitely diagnosed until the uterus is just fully removed.
Endo currently has no cure. It barely even has a treatment because most of the treatments don’t work well and then also usually give you more issues. Like the only endo-specific medication out there is Orilissa (post on trying it here and here) and of all the many side effects, bone loss is one of the main ones. You can only take it for 2 years before the bone damage can’t be undone. Lupron and Depoprovera are very aggressive shots that make things worse for the person than the endo was. They have side effect lists a mile long that include mental health changes, some as severe as having suicidal thoughts. Obviously different things work for different people so talk to your doctors, and do your own research to see what could happen.
The main way these surgery’s work is they fill you with air so that none of your insides stick to each other or stick to the sides of your abdomen. Then they go in laparoscopically by making 4 small incisions and using a camera to see where the spots are so they can remove them. Now, since there is no cure for endo, this is basically just a small treatment to hopefully give me a couple of years with much less pain. While I was getting the surgery, they also replaced my IUD so that it will have fresh hormones and hopefully help keep things suppressed for a bit longer.
I will also be cutting out dairy and continuing to stay away from gluten to also help keep my endo return slower, and then also lower the inflammation in my body. I am also going to be vlogging this whole process so I can show how it all looks as I heal. So stay tuned for that and head over to my YouTube channel to subscribe!
See you, tomorrow friends!
Madey
Cover art by Avery Lynch