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
