Endometriosis Awareness Month

How has half of March slipped past without my even mentioning that it’s Endometriosis Awareness Month?! I know, I know: Endometriosis Awareness Week has long since passed us by with no mention by yours truly… what can I say? I’m kind of a slacker. But surely I won’t let a whole month go by without mentioning it!

Since there’s still a decent amount of March left, check out endometriosis.org’s list of worldwide endo events taking place this month by clicking here. Those of you in other countries can click to find an upcoming event near you (or hopefully near you!). I have no affiliation with endometriosis.org; it’s just a website that I think is very informative about endometriosis.

You won’t find any lists of endo facts or stats on my blog: I leave that task to more qualified sources, like the site I just mentioned. In fact, I don’t really talk much about endo on The Endo Zone… shame on me! This blog is more about how endometriosis has affected my fertility and follows my quest to not allow this disease to rob me of having children. I’m not an endo proponent or advocate by any means. Instead, what you will find here is one woman’s account of living with endometriosis and, in many ways, living around endometriosis.

But since it is Endometriosis Awareness Month and since this blog is called The Endo Zone, I thought I’d take a minute to tell my readers how endometriosis has affected my life. So here we go!

Topping the list would be my endo surgeries, but they only happen every few years; that still leaves my day-to-day life with endometriosis. In that sense, I’m one of the fortunate ones. It’s so true that one’s stage of endometriosis doesn’t correlate to her pain level: for instance, I have severe stage 4 endo. Yet I don’t suffer from the daily debilitating pain that another endo sister with stage 1 or 2 might live with. Instead, endo affects my daily life in the form of heavy menstrual cramps, mega big period clots, and daily ovarian pain. Oh, and 60 months’ worth of infertility… lest I forget. Blocked fallopian tubes, adhesions, and adenmyosis are all parts of my endo experience, but I can’t actually feel those things. So while they might affect my life, if it weren’t for surgeries then I’d probably never even know these things existed in my body.

And that’s what endo is: an invisible illness. A real predator, but an unseen one. It lurks and steals, and is—incredulously enough—often misdiagnosed.

While endo awareness and research are definitely important, I don’t define myself by having endometriosis. That’s part of the reason I’ve never before posted about Endo Awareness Month. True, I suffer from endometriosis. But it’s such a small part of who I am.  I believe that God is a Big God. So I try not to get caught up in the diagnosis and, instead, I like to focus on His promises of restoration and healing. Now I don’t discredit all the hard work and effort that others have made in getting this disease onto people’s radar… And I hope that I don’t come across as unrelatable… It’s just that I believe this diagnosis is something which, in the long run, will not conquer me.

Or any of us.

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Finally, I can’t finish this post without mentioning my BFF of the blogging world and fellow endo warrior, the fabulous Lisa of Bloomin’ Uterus. If you have even a speck of endometriosis in your body and aren’t already following Lisa’s site, run—don’t walk—on over there by clicking here.

In keeping to my promise to Lisa, here I am wearing my Bloomin’ Uterus t-shirt in honor of Endometriosis Awareness Month.

Since I didn’t have anyone to take my pic, I had to use the bathroom mirror and the writing is backward! It says, “Endometriosis Awareness and Support,” followed by the site name. Good shirt for a good cause!

Happy Endometriosis Awareness Month to you all!