Since my first period at 10 and a half, I have had significant pain. My mother and my friends or my gynecologist told me that it was normal. Today I want to shout on the roofs that no, it's not normal, the proof for more than four years I have no pain, soft rules, regular cycles, I have no more need to take medicine.
If there is an important message that I want to convey this is this: no it is not normal to have pain when you have your period and no it is not normal to prescribe the pill a young girl because she pains and pimples without further explanation or support. The pimples remained, the pains too.
So I continued to live like this for years, taking on myself, swallowing painkillers and anti-inflammatories like candy because it seems that it was normal! Normal like: falling into apples, writhing in pain, not being able to bear being touched, vomiting, having diarrhea or being constipated, taking painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs in high doses, having pain in certain positions during sexual intercourse . But it seems that this is normal.
A few years later I read an article on endometriosis. I recognize all of my symptoms and everything lights up. I’m looking for more information. That’s it I’m sure. However, when I talk to my gynecologist she tells me that no, that endometriosis is a serious illness. She sends me to do examinations suspecting digestive problems. These reviews are negative.
I tell myself that I may be exaggerating, well I think I know but prefer to listen to this gynecologist, her white coat, her years of study and experience. I also listen to it because more than the symptoms I also read the words infertility, handicap, digestive pocket and that scares me.
No, it's not normal to have pain when you have your period
Diagnosis falls: endometriosis stage IV, the most advanced stage
But one day everything collapses. More acute pain like stabbing on the left side bends me in half and a high fever brings me to the emergency room.
I have surgery for the first time for a ruptured cyst and the diagnosis falls: "you have endometriosis". I knew it. A stage IV endometriosis, the most advanced stage, with damage to my utero sacral ligaments, a huge lump in Douglas' pouch beginning to invade my rectum and cysts in the ovaries. Fifteen years of medical wandering before being finally diagnosed.
4 months later, I feel the same pain and undergo a new emergency operation. There, I am offered a hormone replacement therapy that simulates menopause. A bite of Zoladex (Gnhr) for a period of 3 months. This treatment was my chance but I understood it much later. During these three months I am fortunate to have no side effects. The other effect, the treatment doesn't work at all on me. A cyst returns.
The treatments have no effect on me, the doctors I consult do not want to operate on me because the risks run by an operation are too great according to them since I am resistant to the pain I can live like this. I felt a lot of anger against these doctors who could not help me, an enormous loneliness, the feeling of not being recognized, of not being heard, I was alone with this so mysterious disease. Again it was my chance!
Because I refused to live like this and decided that if no one could help me I would find solutions on my side. I surrounded myself. I have taken various natural steps such as kinesiology, osteopathy, or even acupuncture. I also started therapy and it was then that I created my blog www.en-douceur.com to share my findings with other women affected by this disease.
These approaches all made me feel good, soothed and accompanied my body but above all allowed me to go further to discover my emotions and my story. I also adopted an anti-inflammatory diet with the help of a naturopath, which I then adapted following my own research and the signs shown by my body. Little by little the pains decreased, my cycles became more regular, my digestive problems had disappeared, I started to live again, some days I no longer thought of this disease.
I was alone with this mysterious disease
Yet something reminded me of it, I did not get pregnant. With my partner at the time, we did a PMA course. The hardest part for me, the uncertainty, the waiting, everything we are not told. Because IVF is that too. And this hard time or by phone we are told that it did not work.
We were asked right away if we wanted to transfer the embryo to the next cycle. For me it was too early, I needed to reconnect to my body. This time that I took gave me an answer: I have heard so many times that endometriosis had invaded my stomach like a spider's web, that everything was somber, stuck, hostile! So no I was not ready to retry an embryo transfer when I imagined my uterus as such an unwelcoming place surrounded by barbed wire. So I decided to find the right doctor to operate on me.
I had the operation on November 16, 2015. The operation consisted in removing adhesions and tissues from endometriosis as well as the cysts and nodule. The result was up to my expectations. No more pain, a reduced quality of life, regular cycles.
I am sure, like my surgeon, that all the changes undertaken before this operation contributed to his success. I am also sure that having maintained these changes contributes to the fact that today, more than four years later, there is still no sign of the disease while I am not taking any treatment.
The road to recovery: more pain, a better quality of life, regular cycles
So eager to understand my body, its functioning, the menstrual cycle, the disease, I read, researched, experienced and even trained myself. Training in health and nutrition first for me but which then led me to support women who have the same background.
Then on the path of connection to my body, I discovered yoga which allowed me to feel again. Like many women, I cut myself off from the pain but also from my feelings, sensations, I lived dissociated from my body and it started to scream and even scream so that I could hear it. Little by little I discover myself, I discover it. I am training as a yoga teacher, always to understand. I do additional training in yin yoga and therapeutic yoga which also allow me to support women to return to their bodies, relax muscles and tissues, circulate energy to release a little of the suffering and tension caused by the disease. and related trauma.
My life has changed, I make my dreams come true, I live partly in Bali, I am in good health, I have energy to create projects, I quit my job and start as a freelancer more and more more requested by women to accompany them on this path that I know so well.
All my research, readings and experiences I gathered in an online program accessible to all, then in a book, a testimony book to give hope but also a practical book to give keys of understanding and tools, these tools and keys that I used to no longer experience this disease.
My book :
Endometriosis, a path to balance, to be published on June 4, 2020 in eds. First, for sale on Amazon
Blog: www.en-douceur.com
Online program: https://en-douceur.teachable.com/p/vivre-l-endometriose-en-douceur