Could i have endometriosis?

[Riks0087]

I've been having strange periods for over a year now, smears, swabs for sti's, ultra sounds, all clear, i decided to ignore and maybe it would regulate it self, which it did for a while but now the periods are back, heavy, frequent. I can have up to 3 periods in a single month, some lasting 4days others 2days and this one over a week so far. I also have other symptoms such as head aches during a "period", dull aches all month, irritable, mood swings can be really bad, im due to go back to the doctor soon but seeing as they keep saying im fine, i am exploring and doing my own research to rake with me to try get it all investigated more thorough. Has anyone had anything like this happen to them?

[ticked]

The symptoms you have described do sound like Endometriosis but could also be a variety of things.

How old are you?

Have you ever been on the birth control pill before to regulate your periods or to even stop them all together to see if that helps with the pain?

Unfortunately Endometriosis can't be seen on an ultrasound unless there is an Endometrioma which is a blood filled cyst.

For me that cyst never grew until I was 26 and I had suffered since the second time I got a period. They could never find anything and I had a lot of the symptoms you are talking about. Some thing that did show up on the ultrasound that make sense now are a tilted uterus, lymphnodes swollen in the pelvic area, free fluid and the tech always having a hard time trying to find my ovaries.. They always said they did and when they operated on me at 27 yrs old I had frozen pelvis (kissing ovaries) everything was wrapped around my uterus. I had very deep infiltrating endometriosis in the pelvic wall, bladder, bowels and rectum and nothing was ever seen on any report.

If you have the symptoms I would recommend seeing an Endometriosis specialist not a regular gyno. If you have endo you want the surgery done right the first time. The difference is that endo specialist do excision (most of the do and that this is important) that means to cut out the disease from the root, where ablation (laser) just gets the surface of the disease leading to more adhesions and the endo will continue to grow.

I have many journals in my bio if you are interested in reading them. Maybe they could help.

Do you have anyone in your family that has endo by chance or had really bad periods?  My family has multiple but almost all of them never had surgery to check. It is possible your mother, aunt or grandmother has or had and it was just not talked about. I would ask them and see. Even among women it is a very taboo subject still so push for answers even with your own family.