One woman said that is a common situation many people don’t know they “nearly killed” her.
Joan Sheridan, 45, found herself on life support after emergency surgery, which led to her being diagnosed with endometriosis. The ‘benign’ and incurable condition affects about one in ten women. It involves tissue similar to the lining of the womb growing elsewhere in the body, causing chronic pain and complications such as fertility problems, adhesions and ovarian cysts, according to the NHS.
The “stab, shoot” abdominal pain began when Joan was 18, initially mostly around her period before becoming more permanent and “excruciating” as she got older. A few days later, the Walton woman would crawl into the bathroom, but scans and tests revealed nothing but multiple visits to the hospital in her teens and 20s.
On a visit to the doctor, she saw a poster about endometriosis. She had never heard of it before, but she recognized the symptoms and mentioned it to her doctor, who said she dismissed the idea. Even as she went in with difficulty breathing and a ballooning belly known as ‘endo belly’, Joan said she was told to take paracetamol.
Joan said she felt “stupid and humiliated”, telling ECHO: “He wasn’t taking me seriously. I knew something was seriously wrong with me, but he wasn’t listening. I called the receptionist.” was also crying, saying that I was not well. No one will listen to me.”
It took until she was 26 years old to be diagnosed with endometriosis. Joan first found out when she woke up on life support three days after going to a hospital in search of help. During surgery, doctors discovered she had endometriosis, the tissue being so extensive, it fused her organs and blocked her gut, causing kidney failure and a buildup of “poisonous fluid”. . He drained seven-and-a-half liters of fluid, cut away the endometriosis tissue, and underwent reconstructive bowel surgery to repair the damage.
The pain is better now—she’s no longer crawling on the toilet, she’s more mobile, and after three rounds of IVF, she had a now 15-year-old daughter, who “the best thing in the world” happened to Joan. But she still suffers “severe exhaustion” and restless nights, and sometimes has to take deep breaths to get out of “that shooting, stabbing pain.”
Surgery can be used to treat endometriosis, either with laparoscopy to remove endometriosis tissue, or with hysterectomy to remove the womb, so Joan knows she would have had surgery anyway. But, she added: “It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad if they had done a thorough investigation, if they had operated earlier. What I did could have been prevented.”
Joan hoped that lessons would be learned from what happened to her two decades ago, but she feels “upset” by reading recent stories about people who, even now, suffer from pain and complications for years before getting a diagnosis. are victims. She said: “It’s heartbreaking. It bothers me. I feel like crying. For the past few days, I’m really upset. I’ve spent two restless nights because it bothers me so much that some Hasn’t changed either.”
She wants people to understand the condition and be taught about it, adding: “I know a lot of people get confused about the fact that it’s your period and it’s only for a week. It’s not – it’s not just a week. It’s day in and day out, night in, night out.”
Dr Manou Kaur, a consultant gynecologist who uses robotic-assisted surgery to treat endometriosis at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, previously told ECHO about the situation since she specialized in the area a decade ago. Awareness has improved. But she said the public needs more education, and more specialist training for health professionals, so the complex and unpredictable condition can be caught and treated earlier.
She said funding for endometriosis research is limited because it is clinically considered a benign, non-life-threatening condition. According to Emma Cox, chief executive of the Endometriosis UK charity, it is not potentially fatal, the way many cancers are, but “what it can do is have a huge detrimental effect on one’s health and well-being”.
Emma said: “Being in severe, chronic pain, and not being able to function properly, affects your whole life. If so when you are in your formative years in school or early in your career, then It will affect how you succeed in life with your education and how you can start working.”
The CEO said that adequate health care resources have not been channeled into endometriosis, a legacy of the lack of research and credibility given to women’s health. According to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the shortage of services has only been exacerbated by COVID, with recent research finding the gynecological waiting list facing the largest increase of all medical specialties.
She wants to see the UK government join Scotland’s goal of reducing the time it takes to receive an endometriosis diagnosis for those who were given birth from more than eight years to less than a year. goes. Endometriosis UK is also campaigning for a more organized effort to provide specialist endometriosis care across the country, as well as the implementation of “age-appropriate” schooling about menstrual health and periods.
