The Letter from Survivors
I'm not usually up on a soap box about this. In fact, I'm really not up there now. For the most part, my friends, family, and doctors are all understanding and caring people who at least make an attempt to sympathize. Every once in awhile though, someone says something so utterly astonishing and/or hurtful, that I'm left completely without reply.
I ( Read more... )
I ( Read more... )
More prevalent and severe in younger women? Yes, I believe that. I went from zero to vomiting in pain in the high school hallway.
Told it was all in my head? Frequently; especially galling was the patronizing "When you feel comfortable with yourself as a woman, the problem will go away.". Hearing my mother sing "I Enjoy Being a Girl" while I writhed in agony on the bathroom floor might have been the worst, though; despite having a friend who was literally drugged into unconsciousness every month she simply couldn't understand the magnitude of the problem.
Drugged myself into oblivion? Had no choice.
Takes an average of 9 years to diagnose? For me, it took 15.
Now, in some ways I was lucky (please note: this is only relative): I only had the pain the first couple of days of my period, not every day. I didn't want children, so the infertility was not spirit-crushing. A hysterectomy did effectively "cure" me - but only because they were able to get every single cell (certainly not a given, considering that they had to scrape my entire abdominal cavity and all the organs in it).
If men had this, there's no way it would be ignored like it is. And *we're* the weaker sex? I don't think so.
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