Thriving Through an Endometriosis Diagnosis: My Story

The first time I read the report of my pelvic MRI and saw that I suffered from deep grade-IV endometriosis. I was scared. I was 32 years old at the time. Even though I am a medical doctor and practicing as an integrative doctor, I hadn’t ever stopped to learn more about endometriosis.

As I studied at medical school for my degree, the subject of gynecology was more focused on pathologies such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and more. The textbooks and professors mentioned endometriosis at some point. However, I do not remember that it ever caught my attention because they clearly did not explain the reality of suffering from this condition.

After reading the report, I had to search for exactly what deep endometriosis was, how it affected the lives of girls with it, what the prognosis was, and what possible treatments were available. I didn’t know a lot about it!

I did not like what I found. It even scared me a lot, especially seeing so many opinions about the difficulty that patients had in achieving a viable pregnancy. I had always wanted to be a mother. Now that I had decided to try for it, I saw everything further and further away.

Once I had the diagnosis, the pilgrimage began with visits to different specialists. I remember the first one. I went alone, thinking well, now he will tell me that I have to take oral contraceptives. I would have to accept it since I saw no other way to approach this disease, and my endometriosis was already very advanced.