Wednesday 16 April 2014

The 5 (or 6) stages of Endometriosis

Receiving a diagnosis for endometriosis will generally cause a flurry of emotions, running the gambit from mild confusion to eerie calm or mild hysteria.

I had spent the majority of my life as an athlete, eating healthily and staying fit were priorities for me and in one afternoon, I was informed that it hadn’t mattered at all. The body I had worked to keep fit had let me down and was falling apart and I came to know it intimately.

It was only after I abstractedly reached the end of the process that I realized that my process for coming to terms with the situation had closely mirrored the stages of grief.


Disappointment
While this is not generally part of the recognized stages of grief, it was a distinct and momentarily crushing part of my process. I had researched endometriosis amongst other possibilities for my symptoms and while cancer is infinitely scarier and more serious, the confirmation of endometriosis after finding a cyst was the most likely and as a result the most dreaded.

Denial
Despite hours of research and despite the fact that endometriosis was by all accounts the least life threatening- in an end your life kind of way, not make your life miserable kind of way. I still couldn’t process it. I decided that while I had endometriosis, it couldn’t be that bad. They would go in, drain the cyst, cut out the endo tissue and I would be done. Finished. Healed. Back to normal… Lets just say I spent a while on this part.

Anger/Fear
There is no cure. There is no cure? There is no cure! Seriously? Seriously! What do they mean there is no cure? Of course there is no cure they don’t care. I mean seriously? There’s no cure? And so it went, over and over and round and round. In truth I knew the anger masked the fear slithering through me. Would I be a weaker person now that I had a condition? I worked in a fast paced industry and even if I didn’t, being in pain and on constant medication was incomprehensible.

Bargaining

I didn’t bargain.

I don’t know why.

Maybe I was too busy being angry and afraid.

Depression
It felt like punishment. Rationality and logic lived on another planet and the feeling of helplessness was insidious and for a few weeks I wallowed. This particular stage hit me at different times, right at the beginning, when I was in denial and even after acceptance. It comes and goes albeit to a much lesser extent and I have learnt to treat it as good days and bad days. On bad days I try a little harder.

Acceptance
And here I am. Acceptance. Accepting… with the nuanced and evolving – if untreated, nature of endometriosis. I’m sure I’ll be dealing with this stage for at least the rest of my pre-menopausal life.


Bringing me to the first stage of the pain toolkit by Pete Moore, which gives an action plan for living with chronic pain. I will post about this next week, if you would like to check it out in the meantime click here.


What process did you use or are you currently using to accept that you have endometriosis?


x

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