I didn't get my period until I was 14, and it was excrutiatingly painful. I was bedridden for a week each time, and I had ripping pains which feel like 1000 fishhooks in my uterus, with strings pulling DOWN. I was diagnosed with endo when I had an ovarian cyst burst (the first time I was 14, the second time when I was 16). The pain was unbelievable, and I was screaming on the hospital floor holding my left side for hours in my hospital room. They gave me ONE ADVIL for the pain. Yeah, don't get me started. 
They saw on my sonograms that I had cysts on both overies and detected tissue forming around my uterine wall on the wrong side. I could have had surgery to explore and scrape it off, but my mother put her foot down and we collectively refused to have me cut open.
So they started treating me with bc pills. We quickley grew tired of American doctors (they're only good for research, I say). As there were only 14 different kinds of bc pills approved of in the US and I took all the orthos, plus the minipill, we turned our attention overseas to France where my family is, and there are over 100 bc pills on the market. Some were better then others, but after a month or 2, the symptoms would come back: bleeding every day of the month, migraines spliting my skull and making me want to claw my eyes out, and cramping. Plus every gut pain made my IBS-D worse (tho I didn't know what IBS was at the time).
So flash forward to when I'm 22. I start on the depo, first for a year, then with a break, then for another year, and I realize my quality of life is so much better while I'm "on the shot." At age 28, I decide I'm going to go for it and do it full time, and voila! Here I am today! No endo, no headaches, no pms, and no blood. 
I'm under several doctors' supervision (GI, Gyn, GP), and I get bone density tests and take calcium supplements (which I love because they constipate me!). I get my calcuim, magnesium and iron levels checked and do bloodwork, urinilasis and liver and renal function tests every 6 months. Normal, touch wood.
I can't think of my life with my period and associated problems now!!! I'd have to give up a lot to go back to bleeding every month, and I am so not interested!
~nelly~
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Endo diagnosis
